Life & Wisdom Quote by Rex Stout

Stout’s line is a tidy slap at the culture of self-labeling, delivered with the offhand confidence of someone who knows exactly how much time identity talk can waste. “This or that” is deliberately vague, a shrug toward categories that can feel both socially coercive and artistically suffocating: political tribes, literary schools, even the premium brand of personality people try to sell as authenticity. The wit isn’t just in refusing labels; it’s in presenting refusal as a matter of scheduling. He’s “too busy,” as if the only reason anyone bothers “regarding” themselves is a surplus of idle hours.

The subtext is classic writerly self-defense. For a novelist working in a market that loves pigeonholes, the statement quietly asserts control: you can file the books however you like, but you don’t get to file the person. That’s also why the second clause turns on the word “regarding.” It’s not “thinking” or “understanding” himself; it’s the specific act of viewing the self as an object, a portrait to be assessed. Stout treats that as a distraction from the lived act of making things.

There’s an American strain of pragmatism here, too: identity as something practiced rather than curated. Yet it’s not naive individualism. The line knows labels have power; it just refuses to let them become the main plot. In an era that increasingly confuses self-description with selfhood, Stout’s joke lands as a rebuke: be careful when the mirror starts taking up more room than the life.