Nero Wolfe

"I accompanied him on the short walk back to his job, for a look at the main office of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company from the outside, thanked him for the lunch, and spent ten minutes on the toughest job in New York, finding a vacant hack. I finally beat a guy with a limp to one."

"Women are random clusters of vagaries."

"If you please, Mr. Jarrett, no labels. Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled."

"Born in St. Louis in 1907, he had done all right and was now the owner and publisher of the St. Louis Star-Bulletin. Who's Who had no information about who was going to kill his son."

"She forked a bite of meat to her mouth and started to chew. She often did that; she might get a part in a play with an eating scene, and mixing chewing and talking needed practice. An actor can practice anywhere any time with anybody, and most of them do."

"A self-invited guest is an abomination, but there is no alternative for me."

"I don't play games. I like using words, not playing with them."

"Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try."

"Wolfe was put between Carol and Alma, and I was across from him and had a good view of his reaction to the tomato soup out of a can. He got it down all right, all of it, and the only thing noticeable was noticed only by me: that he carefully did not permit me to catch his eye."

"That was a first — the first time Inspector Cramer had ever arrived and been escorted to the office in the middle of a session with the hired hands. And Saul Panzer did something he seldom does — he stunted. He was in the red leather chair, and when I ushered Cramer in I expected to find Saul on his feet, moving up another yellow chair to join Fred and Orrie, but no. He was staying put. Cramer, surprised, stood in the middle of the rug and said, loud, "Oh?" Wolfe, surprised at Saul, put his brows up. I, pretending I wasn't surprised, went to get a yellow chair. And damned if Cramer didn't cross in front of Fred and Orrie to my chair, swing it around, and park his big fanny on it. As he sat, Saul, his lips a little tight to keep from grinning, got up and came to take the yellow chair I had brought. That left the red leather chair empty and I went and occupied it, sliding back and crossing my legs to show that I was right at home."

"I work for Nero Wolfe. ... He knows more words than Shakespeare knew."

"You are looking at the wrong side. Just turn it over, that's all you ever have to do, just turn it over."

"My only objection to Jews is that one of them is as good a poker player as I am. Sometimes a little better."

"It's possible to tell your mind what to do only when your mind agrees with you."

"To everybody, starting with us."

"It's a temptation, sure it is, but I'm not like Oscar Wilde, I can resist it."

"Pierre said I was the greatest detective in the world. All is vanity."

"The last man who spat at me," I said casually, "got three bullets in the heart before he hit the floor."

"That will do, Archie." Wolfe put down his empty glass. I had never heard his tone more menacing. "I am not impressed with your failure to understand this abominable outrage. I might bring myself to tolerate it if some frightened or vindictive person shot me to death, but this is insupportable." He made the growling noise again. "My food. You know my attitude toward food." He aimed a rigid finger at the jar, and his voice trembled with ferocity. "Whoever put that in there is going to regret it."

"I have never regarded myself as a feast for the eye, my attractions run more to the spiritual, but on the other hand I am not a toad, and I resented her expression."

"Cramer: "Why did you notice that?" "Ah," I said. "Now you've got me. I give up. I'm trapped. Why does anybody notice anything?""

"You are not Archie. Thank God. One Archie is enough."

"There is nothing in the world," he said, glaring at me as if I had sent him an anonymous letter, "as indestructible as human dignity. That woman makes money killing time for fools. With it she pays me for rooting around in mud. Half of my share goes for taxes which are used to make bombs to blow people to pieces. Yet I am not without dignity."

"And there's no doubt he has fifteen or twenty pasts; I know that much about him."

"It's all right, boss," I said, trying to smile as if I were trying to smile bravely. "I don't think they'll ever convict me. I'm pretty sure they can't. I've got a lawyer coming to see me. You go home and forget about it. I don't want you to break training."

"Wolfe pronounced a word. It was the first time I had ever heard him pronounce an unprintable word, and it stopped me short."

""Indeed," I said. That was Nero Wolfe's word, and I never used it except in moments of stress, and it severely annoyed me when I caught myself using it, because when I look in a mirror I prefer to see me as is, with no skin grafted from anybody else's hide, even Nero Wolfe's."

"Archie. I submit to circumstances. So should you."

"Use your brains, but give up the idea of renting mine."

"Wolfe: "Did you word the receipt properly?" "No, sir. I worded it the way you told me to.""

"Four capsules were found. Two are there in your drawer. One, as I told you, was used in a scientific experiment in Wolfe's office and damn near killed him. He's keeping the other one for the Fourth of July."

"When the day finally comes that I tie Wolfe to a stake and shoot him, one of the fundamental reasons will be his theory that the less I know the more I can help, or to put it another way, that everything inside my head shows on my face. It only makes it worse that he doesn't really believe it. He merely can't stand it to have anybody keep up with him at any time on any track."

"It was smack in the middle of the Great Meat Shortage , when millions of pigs and steers, much to the regret of the growers and slaughterers, had sneaked off and hid in order to sell their lives dear, and to Nero Wolfe a meal without meat was an insult. His temper had got so bad that I had offered to let him eat me, and it would be best to skip his retort."

"Your name's Goodwin," he told me impolitely, without overexerting any muscles. "Thanks," I thanked him. "How much do I weigh?"

"I rarely leave my house. I do like it here. I would be an idiot to leave this chair, made to fit me —"

"So that wet December morning, tired and peevish and desperate, he had sent me to the garage for the car, and when I rolled up in front of the house there he was on the sidewalk, in his hat and overcoat and cane, grim and resolute, ready to do or die. Stanley making for Livingstone in the African jungle was nothing compared to Wolfe making for Krasicki in Westchester."

"What I wanted was to get my thumbs in a proper position behind Noonan's ears and bear down …"

"… and besides, women do not require motives that are comprehensible by any intellectual process." "You said it," Gus acquiesced feelingly. "They roll their own."

"This is the inexorable miasma of murder."

"There's nothing as safe as ignorance — or as dangerous."

"Two of them were just men whose names I knew and with whose records I was fairly familiar, but the third was Saul Panzer, the one guy I want within hearing the day I get hung on the face of a cliff with jet eagles zooming at me."

"I repeat, there are times when love takes over. (Santa Claus, where is yours? But I suppose you can't drink through that mask.) There are times when all the little demons disappear down their ratholes, and ugliness itself takes on the shape of beauty; when the darkest corner is touched by light; when the coldest heart feels the glow of warmth; when the trumpet call of good will and good cheer drowns out all the Babel of mean little noises. This is such a time. Merry Christmas! Merry merry merry!"

"The point was this, that he had shown what he really thought of me. He had shown that rather than lose me he would do something that he wouldn't have done for any fee anybody could name."

"For what you pay me I do your mail, I make myself obnoxious to people, I tail them when necessary, I shoot when I have to and get shot at, I stick around and take every mood you've got, I give you and Theodore a hand in the plant room when required, I lie to Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins whether required or not, I even help Fritz in the kitchen in emergencies, I answer the phone."

"I was born in Montenegro and spent my early boyhood there. At the age of sixteen I decided to move around, and in fourteen years I became acquainted with most of Europe, a little of Africa, and much of Asia, in a variety of roles and activities. Coming to this country in nineteen-thirty, not penniless, I bought this house and entered into practice as a private detective. I am a naturalized American citizen."

"Born in Ohio. Public high school, pretty good at geometry and football, graduated with honor but no honors. Went to college two weeks, decided it was childish, came to New York and got a job guarding a pier, shot and killed two men and was fired, was recommended to Nero Wolfe for a chore he wanted done, did it, was offered a full-time job by Mr. Wolfe, took it, still have it."

"Don't raise one brow like that. You know it disconcerts me."

"I had first noticed her in the lobby of the Churchill, because she rated a glance as a matter of principle — the principle that a man owes it to his eyes to let them rest on attractive objects when there are any around."

"He picked up the top item from the little pile of mail, an airmail letter from an orchid hunter in Venezuela, and started to read it. I swung my chair around and started sharpening pencils that didn't need it. The noise of the sharpener gets on his nerves. I was on the fourth pencil when his voice came."

"Wolfe was standing over by the big globe, probably picking out a spot for me to be exiled to."