Triple Jeopardy Quotes

“Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn’t make me want to smile back. “A policeman asking questions,” he said in the level tone he had used before, “has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home—especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I—we do not have one.”
― Rex Stout, Triple Jeopardy

“By that time I would have been chewing on a railroad spike if I had had one, and Wolfe was working hard trying to be serene. Between nine-thirty and ten-thirty he made four trips to the bookshelves, trying different ones, setting a record.”
― Rex Stout, Triple Jeopardy

“Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I—we do not have one.”
― Rex Stout, Triple Jeopardy

“I think the police and the FBI are quite capable of sacrificing the rights of a private citizen to what they consider the public interest.”
― Rex Stout, Triple Jeopardy

“The inquiring mind is rarely blessed with certainty; it must make shift with assumptions;”
― Rex Stout, Triple Jeopardy

“No, Mr. Vardas, I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man’s spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is an hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity. One of the prime ambitions of a jackass is to bray louder than any other jackass, and man is not …”
― Rex Stout, Triple Jeopardy