If Death Ever Slept Quotes

“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

“He wrote short and he wrote often, which tended to obscure the fact that he wrote well. Unless it leads to obscurity, brevity is rarely praised (or employed) in the journals of, ah, serious literary criticism, and frequency is often equated with frivolity.”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept

“being out on bail is good for the ego. It gives you a sense of importance, of being wanted; it makes you feel that people care.”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept

“If he does it right and is lucky, in nine or 10 months he scoops the tiny half-inch seedlings out of the bottle and plants them in community pots. A year later he transplants them to individual three-inch pots and in another two years to 4 1/2-inch pots, and crosses his fingers. Then, five or six or seven years since the day he put pollen to stigma, he sees an orchid no one ever saw before. It is different from any orchid that has ever bloomed, including those in the Garden of Eden.”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept

“Otis Jarrell, with a stranger at each elbow, a man and a woman, was stirring a pitcher of Martinis.”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept

“The toughest guy I ever ran into had cheeks that needed a brassière.”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept

“closet,”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept

“Perhaps you don’t know all there is to know about a woman after watching her at an evening of bridge, but you should know more than when you sat down.”
― Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept