Quote

The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.

Rex Stout

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Majors
Major
Satisfactions
Constant
Seized
Opportunity
Petty
Life
Offered
Permit
Opportunities
Satisfaction

More quotes by Rex Stout

Image
A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
Rex Stout
Image
There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.
Rex Stout
Image
Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
Rex Stout
Image
A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.
Rex Stout
Image
To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
Rex Stout
Image
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
Image
MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
Rex Stout
Image
There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions - is he tall, is he short? - he had better quit.
Rex Stout
Image
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
Image
In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
Rex Stout
Image
All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
Rex Stout
Image
If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.
Rex Stout
Image
Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people.
Rex Stout
Image
I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.
Rex Stout
Image
Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout
Image
The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
Rex Stout
Image
The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Rex Stout
Image
It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
Rex Stout
Image
One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.
Rex Stout
Image
I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness.
Rex Stout