Rex Stout

“I have undertaken to to find an explanation for something that can't possibly be explained-Nero Wolfe”

“The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold -- if you have one.”

“You can't base your actions on the theory that anyone you don't keep your eye on is apt to get killed.”

“MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.”

“All there was to it, he was in a panic. He was scared stiff that any minute a fact might come bouncing in that would force him to send me down to Cramer bearing gifts, and there was practically nothing on earth he wouldn't rather do, even eating ice cream with cantaloupe or horseradish on oysters.”

“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.”

“Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish.”

“When we turned right on Thirty-fifth Street our suffix came along. By the time we rolled to the curb in front of Wolfe's house there wasn't even hyphen between us.”

“Wolfe could get sentimental about it if he wanted to, but I don't like any stranger nosing around my private affairs, let alone a nation of 130 million people.-Archie Goodwin”

“It strikes me, sir, that you are nearing the point where even a grateful American might tell you to go to the devil.-Nero Wolfe to an FBI Agent”

“More people saying what they believe would be a great improvement. Because I often do I am unfit for common intercourse.-Nero Wolfe in "Blood Will Tell”

“Dignities are like faces; no two are the same.”

“I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that took it for granted any question he asked was going to be answered because he asked it. I don't like it and I know of no way anybody is ever going to make me like it.”

“Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.”

“Only the man that knows to little, knows too much." Nero Wolfe”

“Mrs. Rachel Bruner: [trying to goad Wolfe] I thought you were afraid of nobody and nothing.Nero Wolfe: [unruffled] I can dodge folly without backing into fear.”

“As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.”

“She had been a pleasant surprise. From what her father had said I had expected an intellectual treat in a plain wrapper, but the package was attractive enough to take your attention off of the contents....she was not in any way hard to look at, and those details which had been first disclosed when she appeared in her swimming rig were completely satisfactory.”

“This is the unluckiest day I've had since my rich uncle changed doctors.”

“Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish.”

“In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.”

“Yeah. I'm the fly in the soup. I don't like it any better than you do. Flies don't like being swamped in soup, especially when it's hot.”

“You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.”

“...if he had married Mrs. Albert Grantham for her money I freely admit that no man marries without a reason and with her it would have been next to impossible to think up another one....”

“If your ego is in good shape you will pretend you're surprised if a National Chairman calls you to tell you his party wants to nominate you for President of the United States, but you're not really surprised.”

“Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.(Nero Wolfe)”

“I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know.(Nero Wolfe)”

“I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.”

“As long as I live I'll never forget the time he had a bank president pinched, or rather I did, on no evidence whatever except that the fountain pen on his desk was dry. I was never so relieved in my life as when the guy shot himself an hour later.”

“A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.”

“What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.”

“Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia......Wolfe seemed absorbed in the pictures. Looking at him, I said to myself, "He's in a battle with the elements. He's fighting his way through a raging blizzard, just sitting there comfortably looking at pictures of snowflakes. That's the advantage of being an artist, of having imagination." I said aloud, "You mustn't go to sleep, sir, it's fatal. You freeze to death.”

“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.”

“[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”

“Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.”

“She turned back to me, graceful as a big cat, straight and proud, not quite smiling, her warm dark eyes as curious as if she had never seen a man before. I knew damn well I ought to say something, but what? The only thing to say was “Will you marry me?” but that wouldn’t do because the idea of her washing dishes or darning socks was preposterous.”

“Fritz was standing there, four feet back from the door to the office, which was standing open, staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz would act if the house was on fire.”

“The point is, did she kill that woman? If I thought she did I would bow out quick — I would already have bowed out because it would have been hopeless. But she didn’t One will get you ten that she didn’t. If she had—”The interruption wasn’t words; it was her lips against mine and her palms covering my ears. If she had been Wolfe’s client I would have shoved her off quick, since that sort of demonstration only ruffles him, but she was mine and there was no point in hurting her feelings. I even patted her shoulder. When she was through I resumed.”

“Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water.”

“Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.”