Dashiel Hammett Quotes

Hammett was the ace performer ... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before. ~ Raymond Chandler

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world. ~ Charles Frazier

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? ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them. And there was a period when I read many of them. I absorbed the form, and I liked it, it was a good one, mostly the hard-boiled school, you know, Chandler, Hammett, and their heirs. That was the direction that interested me most. ~ Paul Auster

And, you know, whenever you check yourself into rehab, they don't focus on, you know, the fact that you're an alcoholic. They go much deeper, you know? I mean, they go way deep. They crack you open and then spill you out and examine all the things that are on the table. ~ Kirk Hammett - Metallica

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

A good horror movie should have peaks and valleys, a good horror movie should move you emotionally; a good horror movie should be exciting to watch and energizing in a weird kind of way. ~ Kirk Hammett

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

I fix things all the time. Every time I do a solo, I re-check it and correct things that don't hit the mark. ~ Kirk Hammett

We wanted to offer something new to our audience. I hate it when bands stop taking chances. ~ Kirk Hammett

On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version. ~ Kirk Hammett

My musical tastes change every week. ~ Kirk Hammett

I went through a whole blues period in the Nineties, and that had some influence on 'Load' and 'ReLoad.' ~ Kirk Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

We'd been living in the Arkansas Ozarks, then the Missouri Ozarks, because it is so inexpensive and does have natural wonders, but we shuffled things and moved to San Francisco, the corner of Dashiell Hammett and Pine. ~ Daniel Woodrell

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

Steve Forman is a brutally funny writer. His no-nonsense, unadorned style begs comparison to Dashiell Hammett, but Hammett's humor at its darkest never hit home this hard. Reading of Eddie Perlmutter's exploits is like rolling in an aisle paved with broken glass and wanting to do it all over again two minutes later. ~ Loren D. Estleman

The main riff for 'SandMan' was just something I wrote one night. ~ Kirk Hammett

But this month is all about CITY OF JASMINE which I hope you already have in your hot little hands. My favorite review snippet? KIRKUS REVIEWS said it's "part screwball comedy".
I can't tell you how much time I spent with Carole Lombard and William Powell and Irene Dunne when I was writing it. I adore the 30s comedies for their light-hearted take on relationships and adventure - and the glamorous settings and occasional dash of intrigue only heighten the magic. (Did you know that Nicholas Brisbane from my Lady Julia series was named for THE THIN MAN's Nick Charles? And apologies to Dashiell Hammett, but I fell in love with the film long before I read the book and appreciated how much it had been lightened in the adaptation!) So when you're reading CITY OF JASMINE, give some thought to who you'd like to see playing Evie and Gabriel - I'd love to hear who you'd cast in your own production. ~ Deanna Raybourn

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