Dashiell Hammett Quotes

I said: All right, talk, but do you mind putting the gun away? My wife doesn't care, but I'm pregnant and I don't want the child to be born with ...

It's probably polite to pretend you don't see people coming out of pawnshops, anyhow.

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

His wife was a tall, stringy woman, perhaps five years older than her husband - say, forty - with a mouth and chin that seemed shaped for gossiping.

The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps.

A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It's not easy once you're out of the habit.

He was the perfect soldier: he went where you sent him, and stayed where you put him, and had no idea of his own to keep him from doing exactly what you told him.

Listen, Dundy, it's been a long time since I burst into tears because a policeman didn't like me.

He went like that," Spade said, "like a fist when you open your hand.

Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken.

You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain't one.

The hell of it, Miss- Is your name Wonderly or Leblanc?' She blushed and murmured: 'It's really O'Shaughnessy - Brigid O'Shaughnessy

Looks like she's been slapping the kid again.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is
and should be
your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.

Be still while I get up or I'll make an opening in your head for brains to leak in.

Now I'm going to have my fun. I've got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I'm going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam's apple to ankles.

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

With what dope I got I think it fills me in pretty well.

I just tell you what happens. I don't explain it.

He's cute," I said.
"Uh-huh," the grey man agreed, "and so's dynamite.

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The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.

If you aren't normal, it's because you're tougher, saner, cooler than normal.

Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it.
page 155

You know Quinn?" Macaulay asked me.
"Ten minutes ago I was putting him to bed."
Macaulay grinned. "I hope you keep his acquaintance like that - social"
"Meaning what?"
Macaulay's grin became rueful. "He used to be my broker, and his advice led me right up to the poorhouse steps."
"That's sweet," I said. "he's my broker now and I'm following his advice." Macaulay and the girl laughed. I pretended I was laughing and returned to my table.

Jerome Falsoner, aged forty-five, was a bachelor who lived alone in a flat on Cathedral Street, on an income more than sufficient for his comfort. He was a tall man, but of a delicate physique, the result, it may have been, of excessive indulgence on a constitution none too strong in the beginning. He was well-known, at least by sight, to all night-living Baltimoreans, and to those who frequented race-track, gambling-house, and the furtive cockpits that now and then materialize for a few brief hours in the forty miles of country that lie between Baltimore and Washington.

I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel...

you'll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again

Nora said: 'I love you, Nicky, because you smell nice and know such fascinating people.

But that's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.

I'll give you your Christmas present now if you'll give me mine."
I shook my head. "At breakfast."
"But it's Christmas now."
"Breakfast."
"Whatever you're giving me," she said, "I hope I don't like it."
"You'll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn't take them back. He said they'd already bitten the tails off the ...

And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it." - Detective Sam Spade

To swipe the immortal lines uttered by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, a great mystery should take the lid off life and let [you] look at the works.

I haven't laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.

Now I pass up about twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there'd be no sense to it. That's the fix I am in. I don't know anything else, don't enjoy anything else, don't want to know or enjoy anything else. You can't weight that against any sum of money. Money's good stuff. I haven't anything against it.

He did not smile. I don't believe in anything, but I'm too much of a gambler not to be affected by a lot of things.

He's the guy that the joke was wrote about: 'Is he a criminal lawyer?' 'Yes, very.

That's wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he's looking out for himself. Don't we all? I don't trust a man that says he's not. And the man that's telling the truth when he says he's not I distrust most of all, because he's and ass and an ass that's going contrary to the laws of nature.

Our lawyers had their chat with the Supreme Court Justice, and promised to repast the chat to other members of the Supreme Court to find out whether they wanted to hear us out.

You ought to have known I'd do it!" My voice sounded harsh and savage like a stranger's in my ears. "Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?

Sam Spade: When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it.

Quinn came over to refill his glass. He looked towards the bedroom door. "Where'd you find the little blonde?"
"Used to bounce it on my knee."
"Which knew?" he asked. "Could I touch it?

Dorothy wants to talk to you. Don't ask her to eat with us."
When Nora returned from the telephone she had a look in her eye. "Now what's up?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just 'how are you' and all that."
I said: "if you're lying to the old man, God'll punish you.

We didn't exactly believe your story.'
Then
?'
'We believed your two hundred dollars.'
'You mean
' She seemed not to know what he meant.
'I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth,' he explained blandly, 'and enough more to make it all right.

Nora: "How do you feel?"
Nick: "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober.

You're good. You're very good. It's chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade.

I don't know much about him; never heard him say more than nope or yup.

You're not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?

I certainly wish you would have invented a more reasonable story. I felt distinctly like an idiot repeating it. Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon)

Dorothy asked timidly: "Did his wife say anything?
"She sent her love to you."
Nora said: "Stop being nasty.

Don't be so damned patronizing. Your performance so far has been a little less than dazzling."
"I didn't mean no harm," I said and kissed her. "That a new dress?"
"Ah! Changing the subject, you coward.

You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.

He opened the door wider. "He's waiting." He gave me what was probably meant to be a significant wink, but a corner of his mouth moved more than his eye did and the result was a fairly startling face.

When he awakened again he could stand, and did. He doused his head in cold water and drank four glasses of water. The water made him sick and after that he began to shake with a chill. He went into the bedroom and lay down on the bare blood-stained mattress, but got up almost immediately to go stumbling and staggering in haste back to the bathroom, where he got down on hands and knees and searched the floor until he had found the rusty razor-blade. He sat on the floor and put the razor-blade into his vest-pocket. Putting it in, his fingers touched his lighter. He took the lighter out and looked at it. A cunning gleam came into his one open eye as he looked at the lighter. The gleam was not sane.

If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready.
Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

Gutman smiled benignly at him and said: Well, Wilmer, I'm sorry indeed to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn't be any fonder of you if you were my own son; but - well, by Gad! - if you lose a son it's possible to get another - and there's only one Maltese falcon.

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.

What do you do with all your money?"
"Me and the French hoard gold.

I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, its possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon. (Kasper Gutman)

He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep clefts between red wales. "I don't give a damn about your honesty," he told her, trying to make himself speak calmly. "I don't care what kind of tricks you're up to, what your secrets are, but I've got to have something to show that you know what you're doing."
"I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it's all for the best, and
"
"Show me," he ordered. "I'm willing to help you. I've done what I could so far. If necessary I'll go ahead blindfolded, but I can't do it without more confidence in you than I've got now. You've got to convince me that you know what it's all about, that you're not simply fiddling around by guess and by God, hoping it'll come out all right somehow in the end.

What do people think about my staying with Harrison with him chasing everything that's hot and hollow?

I know a man who once stole a Ferris-wheel

She seems to be having a pretty good time despite her worrying. That's Lily.

You're drunk, and I'm drunk, and I'm just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know. That's the kind of girl I am. If I like a person, I'll tell them anything they want to know. Just ask me. Go ahead, ask me.

Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny

She laughed. "All right, all right. Still want to leave for San Francisco tomorrow?"
Not unless you're in a hurry. Let's stick around awhile. This excitement has put us behind in our drinking.

What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with Life.

She's cute, but she's cuckoo. She wouldn't be his daughter if she wasn't. You can't tell how much of what she says is what she thinks. And you can't tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened.

The truth is you don't like the theater except the times when you're in a room by yourself putting the play on paper.

A bullet kissed a hole in the door-frame close to my noodle.

That's Mama, divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo.

Yes,' Spade growled. 'And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it.' He released Cairo's wrist and with a thick open hand struck the side of his face three times savagely.

It's awfully easy to be in love in jail.

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down - from high flat temples - in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

The people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest at it, and they're easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You'd think they'd be on the look-out for lies, but they seem to be the very ones that will believe almost anything at all.

The roof might fall in; anything could happen.

When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around-bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere.
Sam Spade

My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.

But besides, I haven't the time, I'm too busy trying to see that you don't lose any of the money I married you for.

Studsy returned alone. "Maybe I'm wrong," he said as he sat down, "but I think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of her right."
Morelli said: "By the throat."
Studsy grinned good-naturedly. "No. She's trying to get somewhere. She works hard at her singing lessons and -

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

This damned burg's getting me. If I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives.

We found a table. Nora said: "She's pretty."
"If you like them like that."
She grinned at me. "You got types?"
"Only you, darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."
"And how about the red-head you wandered off with at Quinns' last night?"
"That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings.

Dorothy's coming up. I think she's tight."
"That's great." I picked up my bathrobe. "I was afraid I was going to have to get some sleep."
She was bending over looking for her slippers. "Don't be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day." She found her slippers and stood up in them. "Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?"
"If she's got any sense. Mimi's poison."
Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: "What are you holding out on me?"
"Oh, dear," I said, " I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn't know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the ... "
"Be funny. Don't you want something to eat?

Men came in and dragged us apart. It took us five minutes to bring Nora to. She sat up holding her cheek and looked around the room until she saw Morelli, nippers on one wrist, standing between two detectives. Morelli's face was a mess: the coppers had worked him over a little just for the fun of it. Nora glared at me. "You damned fool," she said, "you didn't have to knock me cold. I knew you'd take him, but I wanted to see it."
One of the coppers laughed. "Jesus," he said admiringly, "there's a woman with hair on her chest.

I haven't any sort of plans for the future but I reckon things will work out in some manner.

How do you feel?" "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober.

Another man whose social life has ruined him.

Nora was eating a piece of cold duck with one hand and working on a jig-saw puzzle with the other when I got home.
"I thought you'd gone to live with her," she said. "You used to be a detective: find me a brownish piece shaped something like a snail with a long neck."
"Piece of duck or puzzle? ...

[Spade] scowled at Gutman and burst out irritably: Jesus God! is this the first thing you guys ever stole? You're a fine lot of lollipops! What are you going to do next
get down and pray?

Alice opened the door when I rang. She had on green pyjamas and held a hairbrush in one hand. She looked wearily at Quinn and spoke wearily: "Bring it in."
I took it in and spread it on a bed. It mumbled something I could not make out and moved one hand feebly back and forth, but its eyes stayed shut.

Thanks for the information about what we call business.

The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second you.

He said: "I'm going to send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means you'll be out again in twenty years. You're an angel. I'll wait for you." He cleared his throat. "If they hang you I'll always remember you.

I don't want to brag about how dumb I am, but this job is plain as astronomy to me. I understand everything about it except what you have done and why, and what you're trying to do and how.