Nero Wolfe

"The subconscious is not a grave; it's a cistern."

"When will a policeman come?" "It will probably be Cramer in person. You know how he'll react when he learns she was here. Say two hours, possibly sooner." "Will she report what she told me?" "No." A corner of his mouth twitched. "That's why I put up with you; you could have answered with fifty words and you did it in one." "I've often wondered. Now tell me why I put up with you." "That's beyond conjecture. ..."

"Of the ten thousand women I have fallen in love with, every single one of them knew it before I did."

"...I suppose a DA has as much right to be a damfool as the people who voted for him."

"Wolfe's bellow would stop a tiger ready to spring."

"Wolfe's line was that a man who had been born in Greece, even though he had left at the age of six, should be familiar with the ancient glories of his native land, and he had been hammering away at Pete for forty months. That morning, as Wolfe swiveled his oversized chair, in which he was seated behind his desk, and Pete knelt and got his box in place, and I crossed to my desk, Wolfe demanded: "Who was Eratosthenes and who accused him of murder in a great and famous speech in four-oh-three B.C.?""

"A man with an alibi is suspect ipso facto."

"Innocence has no contract with bliss."

"Saul smiled. His smile is as tender as he is tough, and it helps to make him the best poker player I know."

"Well. When cheek meets cheek. You are manifestly indomitable and I must buckle my breastplate."

"I dived for the connecting door and went with it as I swung it open, and kept going, but two paces short of Wolfe's desk I halted to take in a sight I had never seen before and never expect to see again: Nero Wolfe with his arms tight around a beautiful young woman in his lap, pinning her arms, hugging her close to him. I stood paralyzed."

"When I mentioned the title of the privately printed book [The Music of the Future] he made a noise — he says all music is a vestige of barbarism ..."

"The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach."

"The doorbell rang, and I went, again giving myself even money that it was Vance, and losing again. It was a girl, or woman, and she had a kind of eyes that I had met only twice before, once a woman and once a man. I have a habit, when it's a stranger on the stoop, of taking a five-second look through the one-way glass and tagging him or her, to see how close I can come. From inside, the view through the glass is practically clear, but from outside it might as well be wood. But she could see through. Of course she couldn't, but she was face-to-face with me, and her eyes, slanted up, had exactly the look they would have if she were seeing me. They were nice enough hazel eyes, but I hadn't liked it the other two times it had happened, and I didn't like it then. Not trying to tag her, I opened the door. (chapter 5)"

"... a woman in the process of getting a divorce is apt to be skittish. She either thinks she has been swindled or she feels like a used car."

"I turned to Wolfe. "Your Honor, I object to the question on the ground that it is insulting, impertinent, and disgusticulous.""

"No. Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water."

"... the weapon was a piece of two-inch galvanized iron pipe sixteen and five-eighths inches long, threaded male at one end and female at the other, old and battered. Easy to hide under a coat. Where it came from might be discovered by one man in ten hours, or by a thousand men in ten years."

""By God. Talk about stubborn egos." Cramer shook his head. "That break you got on the carton. You know, any normal man, if he got break like that, coming down just in the nick of time, what any normal man would do, he would go down on his knees and thank God. Do you know what you'll do? You'll thank you. I admit it would be a job for you to get down on your knees, but—" (chapter 6)"

"And I am also not surprised that my employer, Mr. Nero Wolfe, approves of its publication because he has a great belief in the influence of printed words in books.But I have not a great hope that many people will eat superior meals because they buy this book and use it. On that I could say much but I will not write much and I will give only one case. There are a man and woman, married, at whose home I eat sometimes. They own fourteen cookbooks, good ones which they have asked me to suggest, and they have many times asked me for information and advice about cooking which I have been happy to give, but the dishes they serve are only fit to eat. They are not fit to remember after I come away. Those people should not try to roast a duck, and especially they should never try to make Sauce Saint Florentin.The facts about food and cooking can be learned and understood by anyone with good sense, but if the feeling of the art of cooking is not in your blood and bones the most you can expect is that what you put on your table will be mangeable. If it is sometimes mémorable that will be only good luck. Mr. Wolfe says that the secrets of the art of great cooking, like those of any art, are not in the brain. He says that no one knows where they are."