A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.
Rex Stout

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout

Doyle stokes in a thousand shrewd touches with no effort at all. Wonderful.
Rex Stout

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.
Rex Stout

Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
Rex Stout

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.
Rex Stout

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.
Rex Stout

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
Rex Stout

I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
Rex Stout


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.
Rex Stout

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.
Rex Stout

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.
Rex Stout

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.
Rex Stout

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
Rex Stout

To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.
Rex Stout

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.
Rex Stout