Rex is a perfect writer — economical, rapid, free of cliché. Epigrammatic, intelligent, charming. What else? That's enough.
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Mark Van Doren, quoted in McAleer, John, Rex Stout: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977, p. 507Rex Stout
The art of a great writer is seen in the perfect fitness of his expressions. He knows how to blend vividness with vagueness, knows where images are needed, and where by their vivacity they would be obstacles to the rapid appreciation of his thought.
George Henry Lewes
Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.
Cyril Connolly
My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren’t many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche.... It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
All those words of praise they use for novels – spare, economical. Why should I shell out ?17 for economical?
Howard Jacobson
She was the perfect cliché among dear little old ladies, down to the very lavender bags she placed among her linen.
Gladys Bronwyn Stern
Stout, Rex
Stove, David
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