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

Rex Stout

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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

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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
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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
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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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
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The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Rex Stout
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Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt.
Rex Stout
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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
Rex Stout
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A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.
Rex Stout
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Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
Rex Stout
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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
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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
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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
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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout
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In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
Rex Stout
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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
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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
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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
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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
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Chili is one of the great peasant foods. It is one of the few contributions America has made to world cuisine. Eaten with corn bread, sweet onion, sour cream, it contains all five of the elements deemed essential by the sages of the Orient: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter.
Rex Stout
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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
Rex Stout