The Rubber Band/The Red Box Quotes

“You can’t tolerate a decent and swift conclusion to a skirmish between an individual and what you call society, as long as you have it in your power to turn it into a ghastly and prolonged struggle; the victim must squirm like a worm in your fingers, not for ten minutes, but for ten months. Pfui! I don’t like the law. It was not I, but a great philosopher, who said that the law is an ass.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box

“Of course there was an off chance that she was a murderess, but you can’t have everything.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box

“As independent as a hog on ice.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box

“He’s disgusted and suspicious. They had Gebert down there, slapping him around and squealing and yelling at him. If you’re so sure violence is inferior technique, you should have seen that exhibition; it was wonderful. They say it works sometimes, but even if it does, how could you depend on anything you got that way? Not to mention that after you had done it a few times any decent garbage can would be ashamed to have you found in it. But”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box

“a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box

“Some day, Archie, I shall be constrained … but no. I cannot remake the universe, and must therefore put up with this one. What is, is, including you.” He”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box

“You know how it is nowadays, everybody’s got it in for somebody else, and half of them have gone cuckoo. When a German ship lands here a bunch of Jews go and tear the flag off it and raise general hell. If a Wop professor that’s been kicked out of Italy tries to give a lecture a gang of Fascists haul him down and beat him up. When you try your best to feed people that haven’t got a job they turn Communist on you and start a riot. It’s even got so that when a couple of bank presidents have lunch at the White House, the servants have to search the floor for banana peels that they may have put there for the President to slip on. Everyone has gone nuts.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band/The Red Box