A Quote by Rex Stout

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.

Rex Stout

Quote Topics

American American Writer Books Cookbooks Could Detective Earn Kinds Living Novels Only Two Writer

Quote Author

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

There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living ? cook books and detective stories.

Rex Stout

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

My first two novels were quirky detective stories followed by a couple of SF/Fantasy novels.

Paul G. Tremblay

I have one room off my kitchen filled with nothing but cookbooks and recipes that are sent to me from around the world. Every two years, I have to go through them and pick out ones to send to the local schools. There's a need for books, especially cookbooks.

Johnny Mathis

The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food, and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it!

Andy Rooney

I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.

Patrick Modiano

I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.

Isabel Allende

I have three libraries. As a gift, a friend alphabetized and organized my main library of novels, history books, and nonfiction. Then I have a photo-book collection. Then there's this nearly whole room of my childhood books. I've also got cookbooks and a big collection of horse-related books.

Sally Mann

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

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. One should earn one's living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anybody can we find joy in scientific endeavor.

Albert Einstein

Evidently, there are many great American writers. But sometimes it can feel as though American fiction is dominated by relatively linear narrative form, with a heavy emphasis on psychological realism. If you limit yourself to a certain kind of American literary fiction, it's easy to forget about the different kinds of books that are being written. You can forget to be ambitious, both as a reader and a writer.

Katie Kitamura

I'm a severe graphic novels junkie. People ask me about it, and I say I like the graphic novels. Comic books are for kids, and graphic novels are for adults. But you can't really separate the two.

Dave Pirner

Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. I'm a writer who's been strongly influenced by European precedents. I'm a writer who feels very close to literary practice in India - which I go to quite often - and to writers over there.

Teju Cole

There's the fact that American fiction is basically the most apolitical fiction on the globe. A South American writer wouldn't dare think of writing a novel if it didn't allude to the system into which these people are orchestrated - or an Eastern European writer, or a Russian writer, or a Chinese writer. Only American writers are able to imagine that the government and the corporations - all of it - seem to have no effect whatsoever.

Michael Cunningham

I loved writing when I was a kid and thought about being a writer then. But I didn't have the confidence or belief that I could earn a living that way, so I never took myself seriously.