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

I've always loved horror, I've always loved collecting, I've always loved weird and macabre things, and I've always loved conventions. So what could be better than having your own Fear FestEviL where all those great and crazy things can be enjoyed by like-minded people under one pretty cool roof? Nothing! ~ Kirk 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

The movie 'Black Cat,' from 1934, is one of my favorite movies. ~ Kirk 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

When people are confronted with something they've never seen before, they really don't know how to react. ~ Kirk 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

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

For me, one of the most perfect times to watch a horror movie is when it's cold and raining outside and there's pretty much no outdoor activity to be done. It kind of sets the mood. ~ Kirk Hammett

Horror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps. ~ Kirk Hammett

Although I'm a lead guitarist, I'd say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm. ~ Kirk Hammett

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

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

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

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need. ~ Ross Macdonald

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

I think it's morally wrong to keep someone away from what keeps him happy. ~ Kirk 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

There's something about a wah pedal that really gets my gut going! People will probably say, 'He's just hiding behind the wah.' But that isn't the case. It's just that those frequencies really bring out a lot of aggression in my approach. ~ Kirk 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

Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish. ~ Raymond Chandler

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

It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos. ~ Kirk 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

Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror. ~ Kirk Hammett

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

I think the whole concept behind lyrics is you better mean what you say, or you should like, become a storyteller. I mean, there's a lot of bands who are just storytellers, and then there are bands who actually have something valid to say. And the bands who have valid points are few and far between. ~ Kirk 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

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

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

For the 'Load' album, I was experimenting so much with tone that I had to keep journals on what equipment I was using. For 'Hero of the Day,' I know I used a 1958 Les Paul Standard with a Matchless Chieftain, some Boogie amps and a Vox amp - again, they're all blended. ~ Kirk Hammett

Too many people, once they reach a comfortable position in life, forget the important role writers like Hammett - who dropped out of high school in his first year to work supporting his family - or Howard - struggling to break into the pulps with absolutely no professional advice and little encouragement - play in literature, just as they tend to ignore the role the working man and woman play in society. ~ Don Herron

Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole. ~ Kirk Hammett

Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties. ~ Kirk 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

In researching 'The Luminaries,' I did read quite a lot of 20th-century crime. My favourites out of that were James M. Cain, Dassiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith. ~ Eleanor Catton

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

After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.' ~ Kirk 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

One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever. ~ Kirk Hammett

I love 'True Blood.' I love 'The Walking Dead.' Those are fantastic series. ~ Kirk 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

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

If I had unlimited funds, wall space and storage, I would collect a lot more things, like 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Star Wars,' science fiction stuff, autographs, and prop guns and weapons. I have to draw the line somewhere. ~ Kirk 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

I've always slightly preferred Spade to Marlowe, probably just because I thought Hammett was cooler than Chandler. He was leftwing, his name shortened to Dash rather than Ray, and he didn't smoke a pipe or like cats. ~ Mark Billingham

I've learned that there's a signature Metallica sound, and if we stray too far from that, our fans get impatient, or they just don't understand, or they miss the point. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing; it's just something we have to contend with. ~ Kirk 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 concept of clearing one's mind before performing a task so that it is consumed by nothing but that task, yet is open at the same time to anything that might happen - that concept can be applied to playing guitar, and it's enormously helpful for improvising. ~ Kirk Hammett

The same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha! ~ Kirk Hammett

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

I would have to say I'm bored with the standard rock, guitar solos, but I've done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn't interested in showing off any more. ~ Kirk Hammett

I've been into horror movies ever since I was five years old. ~ Kirk 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

Metallica is a very complicated, fragile thing. On the outside, it's all metal, but on the inside it's very delicate. ~ Kirk Hammett

My musical tastes change every week. ~ Kirk Hammett

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

I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive. ~ Kirk Hammett

Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time. ~ Kirk Hammett

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