Rex Stout on character

Rex Stout was prolific--he claimed it took between 35 and 41 days to write a novel, as long as he wasn't drinking. He wrote 33 novels and I won't get into the number of stories. His best-known as the creator of Nero Wolfe--the genius detective with the too too solid flesh.

"A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat."

I won't pretend to have read more than about a dozen of his books so far, but these are three of my favorites so far:

The Silent Speaker

The Golden Spiders

Not Quite Dead Enough

Here's a bonus quote:

"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."