228 Quotes by Rex Stout

But Mr. Cramer,.” Wolfe protested, “is it my fault if destiny likes this address?

Good heavens.” Wolfe pushed back his chair, not of course with violence, but with determination. “Archie. Understand this. As a man of action you are tolerable, you are even competent. But I will not for one moment put up with you as a psychologist. I.

He’s sick.” “What with?” “Sitzenlust. Chronic. The opposite of wanderlust.

Is all this necessary?” Bowen wanted to know. “Perhaps not,” Wolfe allowed, “but I’m exposing a murderer and claim a measure of indulgence. You must have expected to spend hours here. Am I tedious?” “Go ahead.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.

I looked at the woman next to Bernard Quest on his left. She was middle-aged, with a scrawny neck and dominating ears, and was unquestionably a rugged individualist, since no lipstick had been allowed anywhere near her.

Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn’t leak and no tire is flat.

Fred put vinegar on things, and no man who did that ate at Wolfe’s table. Fred did it back in 1932, calling for vinegar and stirring it into brown roux for a squab. Nothing had been said, Wolfe regarding it as immoral to interfere with anybody’s meal until it was down and the digestive processes completed, but the next morning he had fired Fred and kept him fired for over a month.

The back-seat driving of the less charitable emotions often makes me wonder that the brain does not desert the wheel entirely, in righteous exasperation. Not.