Rex Stout (1886

Avenarius’ Book of Quotations

Rex Stout

[an asterisk * denotes a collection of novelettes]
[two asterisks ** denote a volume that does not feature Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe]

Here is a list of collections of Rex Stout quotations already available in Avenarius’ Book of Quotations:

Fer-de-Lance (1934) [101 kb + 15 kb]
Too Many Cooks (1938) [42 kb + 7 kb]
The Black Mountain (1954) [9 kb]

Coming up are collections of quotations from the following Rex Stout volumes:

The Rubber Band (1936)
** Red Threads (1939)
** Double for Death (1939)
Over My Dead Body (1940)
Where There’s a Will (1940)
* Black Orchids (1942)
The Silent Speaker (1946)
And Be a Villain (1948)
The Second Confession (1949)
* Three Doors to Death (1950)
In The Best Families (1950)
Golden Spiders (1953)
If Death Ever Slept (1957)
Champagne for One (1958)
* And For to Go (1958)
Plot It Yourself (1959)
The Mother Hunt (1963)
A Right To Die (1964)
The Doorbell Rang (1965)
Death of a Doxy (1966)
The Father Hunt (1968)
Death of a Dude (1969)
Please Pass the Guilt (1973)
A Family Affair (1975)
* [Death Times Three] (1985)

Quotations from the following short stories (novelettes) will be made available soon:

Assault on a Brownstone (1959)
Bitter End (1940)
Black Orchids (1942)
Christmas Party (1958)
Cordially Invited to Meet Death (1942)
Door to Death (1950)
Easter Parade (1958)
Fourth of July Picnic (1958)
Frame-Up for Murder (1958)
Man Alive (1950)
Murder Is No Joke (1958)
Omit Flowers (1950)

There will be four additional sections of quotations:

Rex Stout’s Miscellaneous quotations
Rex Stout’s Worst quotations
Quoted By Rex Stout
Others About Rex Stout

Collections of quotations from the remaining works by Rex Stout will be continually added to the website as the novels become available for study to the webmaster. The aim of this section of the website is, one day, to offer a selection of quotations from the entire Corpus of Rex Stout’s work. (And beyond, including his less known “serious” genre novels.)

One fine quotation by Rex Stout has been chosen as one of the mottoes for Avenarius’ Book of Quotations: click here to read the pronouncement by Nero Wolfe.

Rex Stout in WWW

Here the aim will be to list all available online resources when it comes to Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I am currently completing the list of Stout websites known to me. (There are at least a couple of dozen of them!)

Apart from websites there are several Rex Stout discussion groups or mailing lists operating: such as a Yahoo Nero Wolfe discussion club, a NeroWolfe mailing list at egroups.com, and the largest mailing list, the Wolfe-list, with at least 150 subscribers. To join that list, send the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the body of the message to wolfe-list-request@mirror.org.

It is ironic that the Wolfe-list is dominated by posters with a conservative or an intolerant bend of mind – such as Archie Goodwin delighted in making fun of. A snug uniformity of opinions is appreciated on the Wolfe-list, and the tolerance shown towards divergent opinions is minimal. Those who express such opinions are often reviled and attacked by the majority. The Wolfe-list thus at times does as much to discredit Rex Stout as to honour him – the quintessential American; the creator of the idiosyncratic nonconformist Nero Wolfe who wouldn’t attempt to appease people trapped in preconceptions of the middle-class.



Rex Stout (1886–1975) is the creator of the famous and phenomenally fat armchair detective Nero Wolfe and his almost equally famous assistant Archie Goodwin. Wolfe is an updated version of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, while Archie is a modern, gritty and wise-cracking Dr. Watson. Archie is just as much Wolfe’s as Dr. Watson’s antithesis. Stout was born on December 1, 1886, in Noblesville, Indiana, to a Quaker family (the sixth of their nine children). He was early recognized as a prodigy in arithmetic. He only briefly attended a university; then he spent two years serving as naval officer. Later he devised a school banking system that was installed in 400 cities throughout the USA. The proceeds enabled Stout to leave to Paris in 1927, devoting himself to writing “serious” fiction. Though the three novels he had published received favourable reviews, Stout only gained renown after turning to detective fiction. He only wrote his first Nero Wolfe mystery in 1934, at the age of 48! It was titled Fer-de-Lance and is among the finest books Stout ever came up with. Thirty-two more Wolfe & Archie full-length novels were to follow; plus thirteen collection of novelettes (typically, each volume including three short mysteries). All in all, there are 73 Wolfe & Archie stories; Stout published his final novel, A Family Affair, a month before he died on October 27, 1975, in Danbury, Connecticut, at the age of 89. Ten years later another Wolfe novelette was discovered and published posthumously in Death Times Three. A prolific writer, Stout wasn't able to maintain the same high standard of writing throughout his career; there were several ups and downs. Generally the early novels tend to be more appreciated by readers – though Stout in his latest years turned in some exquisite novels. When he's at the top of his craft, he deserves to be ranked among not merely America's leading mystery writers, but leading humorous writers as well: Archie Goodwin has been critically appraised as "the lineal descendant of Huckleberry Finn"! Among Stout's finest achievements (besides Fer-de-Lance) are Too Many Cooks, Some Buried Caesar, The Silent Speaker, In the Best Families, Plot It Yourself, The Doorbell Rang, and Death of a Dude. At least one non-Wolfe mystery also deserves high credit: Red Threads. It is written in the vein of Jane Austen – the writer Rex Stout admired most of all.