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41 " 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. "
― Rex Stout , Too Many Clients (Nero Wolfe, #34)
42 " What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to. "
― Rex Stout , Too Many Cooks (Nero Wolfe, #5)
43 " 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. "
― Rex Stout , The Red Box (Nero Wolfe, #4)
44 " 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 reasons for the decisions that are already made."[Life magazine, December 10, 1965] "
― Rex Stout
45 " It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous scene.[An Invitation to Learning, January 1942] "
46 " 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. "
47 " 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. "
― Rex Stout , Champagne for One (Nero Wolfe, #31)
48 " Enforced courtesy is worse than none. "
49 " Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.(Nero Wolfe) "
― Rex Stout , Three Doors to Death (Nero Wolfe, #16)
50 " That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant. "
51 " calm. "
― Rex Stout , Fer-de-Lance (Nero Wolfe, #1)
52 " Of course, a hole in the ice offers peril only to those who go skating. "
53 " When I consider myself superior to anyone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than his skin. "
― Rex Stout , A Right to Die (Nero Wolfe, #40)
54 " A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality "
55 " 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 "
― Rex Stout , Over My Dead Body (Nero Wolfe, #7)
56 " 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. "
― Rex Stout , If Death Ever Slept (Nero Wolfe, #29)
57 " Only the man that knows to little, knows too much." Nero Wolfe "
58 " Nothing is simpler than to kill a man; the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences. "
59 " You know what my boss says? He says that skepticism is a good watchdog if you know when to take the leash off. "
60 " 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 "
― Rex Stout , Trio for Blunt Instruments (Nero Wolfe, #39)