A Quote by Rex Stout

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.

Rex Stout

Quote Topics

Because Been Best Democratic Detective Detective Stories Detective Story Doctrine Far Foundation Get Guilty Innocent Literature Matter Mean Neck Possibly Stories Story Thesis Think Until Very Were

Quote Author

Rex Stout
American - Writer
December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.

Sergei Lukyanenko

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

Dashiell Hammett

Occasionally, I have written about stories related to crime, but I have never attempted a traditional detective story. So I want to write a true detective story.

Ruskin Bond

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does.... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way.

Raymond Chandler

I don’t think I would ever want to be a writer of detective stories - but I would like to be a detective and there is a large deal of detection in the short story.

Mary Lavin

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.

Otto Penzler

Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete's sake. That's pretty unambitious.

Mark Waid

I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

Robert Cormier

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.

Peter Shaffer

American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form.

Chester Himes

In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.

Bertrand Russell

to keep believing in life, until you're sure of death, it's the way a detective should be." - Kogoro Mouri, Detective Conan

Gosho Aoyama

I think there's part of me that's longing to play a Sherlock Holmes or sort of a House character, like a real detective. Like a real, moody detective. Like a real, sarcastic, mentally ill detective. I think it would be really fun to do something like that.

Janet Varney

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

Agatha Christie

make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

Dorothy L. Sayers

The tradition, particularly in old-school British detective things, is everybody's in the drawing room or the library, and they're all gathered, and the detective walks around and tells them where they were that night, and you see the flashbacks.

Chris Chibnall

A Quote by Rex Stout

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors