A Nero Wolfe Mystery Quotes

Year:

2001 – 2002

Tagline:

«A new kind of criminal, a new kind of crime, a new kind of client, a new kind of fee.»

Country:

USA

Genres:

Action, Detective, Drama

You know, my mother once told me "Never go someplace where you're not welcome."

A woman who is not a fool is dangerous.

Curiosity creeps into the homes of the unfortunate under the names of duty or pity.

Measure your mind’s height by the shadow it casts.

— This, uh, is in the strictest of confidence.
— Ah, yes, well, of course. Unless you’re loaded with something too heavy for me, like murder or treason.
— "Other sins only speak, murder shrieks out. Treason doth never prosper." Fear not, Mr. Goodwin, I am loaded with neither.

Anyone lies when the alternative is intolerable.

— Intimate or not, you’ve known this girl for three years. Did she kill that man?
— Yes and no.
— That doesn’t help.
— Yes, chiefly because she asked me to come here, change my story and back hers up.
— I didn’t kill him!
— And the no is a little less direct you see, when a man gets a girl pregnant, her normal reaction is to make him marry her, not kill him. See, the thing she wants most is a father for the baby, and a dead one is no good.
— That’s silly, I’m not pregnant. There’s only one way a girl can get pregnant, and it couldn’t have been that with me because it’s never happened.

Ah, yes, yes, I said that, with most people, when words start on their way out, they have to go through a checking station to get an okay.

— I wouldn’t mind that. We’ll go somewhere. See, I know you’re the kind of man I could talk to, you’d understand.
— I have the feeling you could thaw me in about four or five hours, and your voice could thaw a refrigerator, but we don’t have time for that now.

— My god, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you just put your arms Around me and told me, "it’s all right, my darling. I’ll take care of everything, leave it to me."
— Oh... It’s all right, my darling, I’ll take care of everything. Leave it to me. Now what?
— Why didn’t I get me a man? I could’ve had a dozen, but no, I had to do it all by myself. And now here I am with a Jaguar and no man. How do you set fire to a car?
— Well, you, uh, pour gasoline all over it, you light a match, Toss it, and jump back real fast. You gotta be careful what you tell the insurance company, Or you might end up in the can.

I lie only when I must...

Obviously, any woman who eats by sufferance without a legal contract would prefer not to eat alone.

Had I remained lean, I would be dead by now. Like you, I was once idiotically romantic. But was cured me; war pickles men in a bride of disgust and dread.

— There's no discipline in this country, Mr. Wolfe.
— I wouldn't say that. We submit to traffic cops and sanitary codes. We are extremely fond of certain liberties.

— But you were an agent of the Austrian government?
— As a boy. I quit.
— And then you joined the Montenegrin army?
— Still a boy, immature. I believed then that all misguided people should be shot. I shot some.