About Rex Stout: Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction, particularly the 33 novels and approximately 40 novellas that featured the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin between 1934 and 1975.
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.
The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.
The minute those two little particles inside a woman's womb have joined together, billions of decisions have been made. A thing like that has to come from entropy.
To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.
To say that 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.
The only difference between me and most people is that I'm perfectly aware that 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 reas...
It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous scene. [ , January 1942]
Every man alive is half idiot & half hero. Only heroes could survive in this maelstrom & only idiots would want to.
A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them." [ magazine, December ...
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 221 1/2 B Baker Street and didn't find him." [ ...
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.
As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
