Rex Stout
Rex Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction, working across novels, short stories, and screenplays throughout a career that stretched across much of the twentieth century.
Stout was born in Noblesville on December 1, 1886, and was educated at Topeka High School and the University of Kansas. He went on to work as a radio personality in addition to his writing, bringing a range of creative output to his name before settling into the genre he became most closely associated with.
His detective fiction centered on two characters: Nero Wolfe, a private detective, and his assistant Archie Goodwin. The pair first appeared in the novel Fer-de-Lance in 1934, and Stout continued writing them for the rest of his life. Together, the two characters featured in 33 novels and 39 novellas or short stories between 1934 and 1975, a run that spanned more than four decades of consistent output. The sheer volume of work built around Wolfe and Goodwin reflects how central that pairing was to Stout's writing life.
Stout died on October 27, 1975, in Danbury. The detective fiction genre, with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin at its heart, remained the defining thread running through his work from that first novel in 1934 right up to the end of his life.
Quotes by Rex Stout
Rex Stout's insights on:
A pig whose diet is fifty to seventy percent peanuts grows a ham of incredibly sweet and delicate succulence which, well-cured, well-kept and well-cooked, will take precedence over any other ham the world affords.
His oratorical baritone was raspy and supercilious under the strain. “You say you are not interested,” he told Wolfe, “in the factors of means and opportunity. The motive is palpable for all of us, but it is also palpable that Miss Duday is biased by animus. She cannot support her statement that after June thirtieth my income from the corporation would have ceased. I deny that Miss Eads intended to take any action so ill advised and irresponsible.
He threw up his hands and waved them around, and shook all over, and laughed as if he never expected to hear a joke again and would use it all up on this one.
At first, yes. But a long intimacy frees you of that illusion, and it also acquaints you with their scantiness of character. The effect they have produced on you is only their bluff. There is not such a thing as too much beauty.
No. The morning will do. You’re impetuous.” He looked at the wall clock. Fritz would come any minute to announce dinner. “Can you get Saul now?
It is indubitable that Carol Mardus was the mother of the baby left in Mrs. Valdon’s vestibule and that she was gravely disquieted to learn that I knew it and could demonstrate it.
You know what my boss says? He says that skepticism is a good watchdog if you know when to take the leash off.
I gathered that with the men the consensus was that women were okay in their place, which I guess was the way cavemen felt about it, and all their male descendants. The question was, and still is, what’s their place?
He lowered the magazine. “Archie. You may remember that I once returned a retainer of forty thousand dollars which a client named Zimmermann had paid me, because he wanted to tell me how to handle his case instead of leaving it to me. Well?” He lifted the magazine. He lowered it again. “Please type the report.” He lifted it again.
I followed the pavement a little over a mile and then turned left again onto a dirt road. It was as narrow as a bigot’s mind, and I got in the ruts and stayed there.