favorite quotes from the first three volumes of Nero Wolfe

• "Thank God," he said, "the hour saves me from further analogies and colloquialisms."



• "Read the books, and I shall be more inclined to discuss the conclusions they have led me to. But even then, of course, I would not attempt to place plain to your eyes the sights my own have discerned. God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements."



• A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.



• [He] opened it with the deliberate and friendly exactness which his hands displayed towards all inanimate things.



• [There] was as much chance of proving it as there was of proving that honesty was the best policy.



• "You don't mind if I talk? God, how I want to talk!"
  
  Wolfe murmured, "This room is hardened to it."



• "A desperate fool is still a fool."



• But as Nero Wolfe says, a nurse that pushes the perambulator in the park without putting the baby in it has missed the point.



• "You always dive into the nearest pool, Archie. Some day you'll hit a rock and break your neck."



• Every man has a right to his own methods if he can get away with them.



• No guy who knows he's right becasue he's too conceited to be wrong can be expected to go into conference about it.



• [He] had the wearied cynical expression of a man who had some drinks three hours ago and none since.

—Fer-de-Lance, The League of Frightened Men and The Rubber Band by Rex Stout. (Specific book citatons available on request.)