Dashiell Hammett Quotes

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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? ... ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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. ~ 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

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

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

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? ~ 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

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 ... ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ 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

Another man whose social life has ruined him. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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 - ~ Dashiell Hammett

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 ~ 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

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

With 'Brick' there was the Dashiell Hammett influence, and with 'Brothers Bloom' there was a really strong Fellini influence - both those movies wore that on their sleeve. ~ Rian Johnson

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

It's awfully easy to be in love in jail. ~ Dashiell Hammett

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing. ~ Megan Abbott

Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken. ~ Dashiell Hammett

I know a man who once stole a Ferris-wheel ~ Dashiell 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ... ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

Looks like she's been slapping the kid again. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it. ~ James Ellroy

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

The roof might fall in; anything could happen. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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? ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

Hammett used to be irritated by that and would answer that nobody ever deliberately wrote a potboiler, you just did the best you could and woke up to find it good or no good. ~ Lillian Hellman

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

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

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

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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) ~ 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

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

Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny ~ Dashiell Hammett

[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? ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ 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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel... ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

Thanks for the information about what we call business. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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. ~ Dashiell Hammett

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