Nero Wolfe: The Black Mountain and Before Midnight

[cimorene]

• "I will not say that to him a woman was more important than a sauce—he could not be accused of ever neglecting a sauce—but he had a warm eye for women."


• I found Wolfe standing with his arms folded and his lips compressed, glaring at a vehicle that deserved it.


• We were locked in a cell with two cots which were already occupied by fifty thousand others. Twenty thousand of the others were fleas, and another twenty thousand were bedbugs, but I never found out what the other ten thousand were.


• "Why should he?"
  
  "He shouldn't. But a man with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable."


• a German who thought he could speak English but was mistaken

—Rex Stout, The Black Mountain

• He was gruff, but he would be gruff saying his prayers.


• eavesdropping is vulgar if you can't distinguish words, and I soon found that I couldn't


• You might think that after putting up with Wolfe for so long I would be acclimatized, and I am up to a point, but he keeps breaking records.


• It is always best to regard journalists as friends if they are not actually standing on your nose.


• "I don't like the look on your face, but I seldom do."

—Rex Stout, Before Midnight