Nero Wolfe

"I am nobody's friend. How much can you pay?"

"This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant."

"Must I again remind you, Archie, of the reaction you would have got if you had asked Velasquez to explain why Aesop's hand was resting inside his robe instead of hanging by his side? Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none? Do you need to be told again that I am an artist?"

"I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action."

"If I were to begin borrowing money I would end by devising means of persuading the Secretary of the Treasury to lend me the gold reserve."

"Compose yourself, Archie. Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god. A genius may discover the hidden secrets and display them; only a god could create new ones."

"Remember that those of us who are both civilized and prudent commit our murders only under the complicated rules which permit us to avoid personal responsibility."

"You stick to it, Archie, like a leech to an udder."

"I'm not trying to pick a quarrel, sir. Hell no. I'm just breaking under the strain of trying to figure out a third way of crossing my legs."

"Archie. One would know everything in the world there is to know, if one waited long enough. The one fault in the passivity of Buddha as a technique for the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom is the miserably brief span of human life. He sat through the first stanza of the first canto of the preamble, and then left for an appointment with ... let us say, with a certain chemist."

"I have no talents. I have genius or nothing."

"To assert dignity is to lose it."

"To be broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe."

"But in connection with my remark to Mr. Kommers it occurs to me that no publication either before or since the invention of printing, no theological treatise and no political or scientific creed, has ever been as narrowly dogmatic or as offensively arbitrary in its prejudices as a railway timetable."

"I would like to say another thing right here, that I know when I'm out of my class. I've got my limitations, and I never yet have tried to give them the ritz."

"At that she wasn't really ugly, I mean she wasn't hideous. Wolfe said it right the next day: it was more subtle than plain ugliness, to look at her made you despair of ever seeing a pretty woman again."

"I knew a guy in the army that used to take out a girl's handkerchief and kiss it before he went to sleep. One day a couple of us sneaked it out of his shirt and put something on it, and you should have heard him when he stuck his snout against it that night. He burned it up. Later he laid and cried, he was like that."

"The back-seat driving of the less charitable emotions often makes me wonder that the brain does not desert the wheel entirely, in righteous exasperation."

"I said, "I'm sleepy. When I have to wait until nearly midnight for my dinner and then it's squirrel stew ..." Wolfe nodded. "Yes, I know. Under those circumstances I would be no better than a maniac.""

"It is the fashion to say anything is possible. The truth is, very few things are possible, pitiably few."

"Wolfe still paid no attention to me. As a matter of fact, I didn't expect him to, since he was busy taking exercise. He had recently got the impression that he weighed too much—which was about the same as if the Atlantic Ocean formed the opinion that it was too wet—and so had added a new item to his daily routine. … He called the darts javelins."

"No one ever suffered any injury from those darts that I know of, except me. Over a period of two months Nero Wolfe nicked me for a little worse than eighty-five bucks, playing draw with the Joker and deuces wild, at two bits a go. There was no chance of getting any real accuracy with it, it was mostly luck."

"It has been many years since any woman has slept under this roof. Not that I disapprove of them, except when they attempt to function as domestic animals. When they stick to the vocations for which they are best adapted, such as chicanery, sophistry, self-adornment, cajolery, mystification and incubation, they are sometimes splendid creatures."

"You know, Mr. Goodwin, this house represents the most insolent denial of female rights the mind of man has ever conceived. No woman in it from top to bottom, but the routine is faultless, the food is perfect, and the sweeping and dusting are impeccable. I have never been a housewife, but I can't overlook this challenge. I'm going to marry Mr. Wolfe, and I know a girl that will be just the thing for you, and of course our friends will be in and out a good deal. This place needs some upsetting."

"I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions."

"All debts are preposterous. They are the envious past clutching with its cold dead fingers the throat of the living present."

"He took his coat and vest off, exhibiting about eighteen square feet of canary-yellow shirt, and chose the darts with yellow feathers, which were his favorites."

"We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits."

"This is Mr. Goodwin, my confidential assistant. Whatever opinion you have formed of me includes him of necessity. His discretion is the twin of his valor."

"Wolfe murmured, "Ten men ,,, a hundred ... a thousand ... Really, Mr. Cramer, with such an outfit as that, you should catch at least ten culprits for every crime committed." "Yeah. We do.""

"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth."

"I know pretty well what my field is. Aside from my primary function as the thorn in the seat of Wolfe's chair to keep him from going to sleep and waking up only for meals, I'm chiefly cut out for two things: to jump and grab something before the other guy can get his paws on it, and to collect pieces of the puzzle for Wolfe to work on."

"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."

"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 by gum I had got him to the station twenty minutes ahead of time, notwithstanding such items as three bags and two suitcases and two overcoats for a four days' absence in the month of April, Fritz Brenner standing on the stoop with tears in his eyes as we left the house ... and even tough little Saul Panzer, after dumping us at the station, choking off a tremolo as he told Wolfe goodbye. You might have thought we were bound for the stratosphere to shine up the moon and pick wild stars."

"I do not soil myself cheaply; I charge high fees."

"And that Maine? I suppose that is your arrondissement?" "No. I haven't got any. We have two kinds of detectives in America, might and main. I'm the main kind. That means I do very little of the hard work, like watering the horses and shooting prisoners and greasing the chutes. Mostly all I do is think, as for instance when they want someone to think what to do next. Mr. Wolfe there is the might kind. You see how big and strong he is. He can run like a deer."

"But… what are the horses for?" I explained patiently. "There is a law in this country against killing a man unless you have a horse on him. When two or more men are throwing dice for the drinks, you will often hear one of them say, 'horse on you' or 'horse on me.' You can't kill a man unless you say that before he does. Another thing you'll hear a man say, if he finds out something is only a hoax, he'll call it a mare's nest, because it's full of mares and no horses. Still another trouble is a horse's feathers. In case it has feathers —" "What is a mare?" I cleared my throat. "The opposite of a horse. As you know, everything must have its opposite. There can't be a right without a left, or a top without a bottom, or a best without a worst. In the same way there can't be a mare without a horse or a horse without a mare. If you were to take, say, ten million horses —"

"It was after eleven o'clock, and half the chairs in the club car were empty. Two of the wholesome young fellows who pose for the glossy hair ads were there drinking highballs, and there was a scattering of the baldheads and streaked grays who had been calling porters George for thirty years."

"Few of us have enough wisdom for justice, or enough leisure for humanity."

"Nothing is simpler than to kill a man; the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences."

"If I offend by being curt, very well. Anyone has the privilege of offending who is willing to bear the odium."

"To me the relationship of host and guest is sacred. The guest is a jewel resting on the cushion of hospitality."

"She leaned back. "Marko told me once, long ago, that you don't like women." Wolfe shook his head. "I can only say, nonsense again. I couldn't rise to that impudence. Not like women? They are astounding and successful animals. For reasons of convenience, I merely preserve an appearance of immunity which I developed some years ago under the pressure of necessity. I confess to a specific animus toward you. Marko Vukcic is my friend; you were his wife; and you deserted him. I don't like you.""

"You, gentlemen, are Americans, much more completely than I am, for I wasn't born here. This is your native country. It was you and your brothers, black and white, who let me come here and live, and I hope you'll let me say, without getting maudlin, that I'm grateful to you for it."

"I wouldn't use physical violence even if I could, because one of my romantic ideas is that physical violence is beneath the dignity of a man, and that whatever you get by physical aggression costs more than it is worth."

"True, it is bad to stab a man in the back, but when one is in a hurry the niceties must sometimes be overlooked."

"It's like this," I told her. "You will be very happy for a while, then you will take a long journey under water and will meet a bald-headed man sitting on some seaweed who you will think is William Beebe but who will begin talking to you in Russian. Not understanding Russian, you will take it for granted that you get the idea, but will discover to your horror that he was talking about something else. Give me the other hand to compare."

"No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket or at least had been fooling around with timetables."

"Where's my beer?"