Meandering here, meandering there, meandering all around . . .

Today is the birthday of Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975), mystery novelist and publisher. He is best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe.

"The only difference between me and most people is that I'm perfectly aware that all my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made."
- Rex Stout

"A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them."
- Rex Stout

"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth."
- Rex Stout

"The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books."
- Rex Stout

“There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you make up.”
- Rex Stout

Stout image source (1)

---

Today is the birthday of Daniel Pennacchioni (born December 1st, 1944*), writer. He is best known by his pen name, Daniel Pennac and for his humorous, imaginative writing style.

"A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself."
- Daniel Pennac

"Since the dawn of education, the student considered as normal has been the student who puts up the least resistance to teaching, the one who doesn't call our knowledge into question or put our competency to the test, a student who already knows a lot, who is gifted with instant comprehension, who spares us searching for the access roads to his grey matter, a student with a natural urge to learn, who can stop being a kid in turmoil or a teenager with problems during our lessons, a student convinced from the cradle that he has to curb his appetites and emotions by exercising his reason if he doesn't want to live in a jungle filled with predators, a student confident that the intellectual life is a source of infinite pleasures that can be refined to the extreme when most other pleasures are doomed to monotonous repetition - in short, a student who has understood that knowledge is the only answer: the answer to the slavery in which ignorance wants to keep us, the sole consolation for our ontological loneliness."
- Daniel Pennac

"We human being build houses because we`re alive but we write books because we` re mortal. We live in groups because we`re sociable but we read because we know we`re alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one`s place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.”
- Daniel Pennac

"Time spent reading, like time spent loving, increases our lifetime."
- Daniel Pennac

* Question of actual date
Pennac image source (1)