Archie Goodwin Quotes

Go to hell, I'm reading!

I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.

Wolfe could get sentimental about it if he wanted to, but I don't like any stranger nosing around my private affairs, let alone a nation of 130 million people.-Archie Goodwin

I knew how to use a dictionary, and if I was going to be spending time around Nero Wolfe, I would have to buy one."-Archie Goodwin in Archie Meets Nero Wolfe

Is this Nero Wolfe’s house?” The voice got me one-half awake. “Yes. Archie Goodwin.” “This is Sarah Jaffee. I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Goodwin, did I wake you up?” “Not quite. Go ahead and finish it.

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn’t write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, “Stout’s supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin.” That’s how I’ve always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, “Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?” She smiled, I recall, and said, “Why, yes. Dozens.

It was delightful; but on awakening this morning I felt so completely water-logged that with only myself to consider I would have remained in bed to await disintegration. Names battered at me: Archie Goodwin, Fritz Brenner, Theodore Horstmann; responsibilities; and I arose to resume my burden. Not that I complain; the responsibilities are mutual; but my share can be done only by me.

When I told [Lily Rowan] I wouldn't be able to make it to the Polo Grounds tomorrow, she began to call Wolfe names, and thought of several new ones that showed her wide experience and fine feeling for words.

Despite some initial reluctance to spend a whole book’s worth of time with a man who flirted with misogyny, I took the plunge. Wolfe, after all, had the good sense to live in Manhattan, and besides, you had to like a man who surrounded himself with exotic tropical plants, consumed epicurean meals, and had the chutzpah to make the universe conform to his rules. And when I met Archie Goodwin, his ebullience and his earthy, rakish charm won me over.

I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of the human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it.

I told Archie I’m sorry I’m a little late,” she said. “I didn’t realize he would have to wait there for me.” It was a bad start. Since no client has ever called him Nero or ever will, the “Archie” meant, to him, either that she was taking liberties or that I already had. He darted a glance at me, turned to her, and took a breath. “I don’t like this,” he said. “This is not a customary procedure with me, appealing to a client for help. When I take a job it’s my job. But I am compelled by circumstance. Mr. Goodwin described the situation to you yesterday morning.” She nodded. Having settled that point, having got her to acknowledge, by nodding, that my name was Mr. Goodwin, he leaned back. “But he may not have made the position sufficiently clear. We’re in a pickle. It was obvious that the simplest way to do the job was to learn where the baby had come from; once we knew that, the rest would be easy. Very well, we did that; we know where the baby came from; and we are stumped. Ellen Tenzer is dead, and that line of inquiry is completely blocked. You realize that?” “Why—yes.

The adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a team generally regarded as seeking justice, can be compared to the adventures of Rex Stout's two most famous characters, Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin.

Go to hell, I'm reading. ~Archie Goodwin

... and when Archie Goodwin wonders about anything he finds out.

Archie Goodwin is the distilled optimism of America as it was for more than half of this century. Ebullient and proud, he still had to be humble because of the great brain of his employer. I read

Are you Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin?” “No. I’m my Archie Goodwin. I’m Nero Wolfe’s confidential assistant.

In the night, he listens. "Two million cases. Two thousand deaths. Too many cries. Someone else has to hear them." In the night, he listens. And only the sound of his own voice comes to him, screaming in frustration. The cry of a lone bat. Unable to find its way.

He announced aggressively, 'I want to see Archie Goodwin.' 'You are.' 'I are what?' 'Seeing Archie Goodwin. Who am I seeing?' 'Oh, a wise guy.' We were off to a bad start, but we got it straightened out that he meant that I was a wise guy, not that I was seeing one...