Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer Quotes

Inspiration is an empty bank account. ~ Mickey Spillane

Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture. ~ Mickey Spillane

Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn't get past Hugo. ~ Mickey Spillane

He was too young to deserve a weight of the world sign like the one he expelled. ~ Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins

No one likes my books except the public. ~ Mickey Spillane

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle. ~ Mickey Spillane

If the public likes you, you're good. ~ Mickey Spillane

Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer. ~ Mickey Spillane

All right, you conniving little punks, I'll play ball, but I'm going to make up a lot of rules you never heard of. You think I'm cornered and it'll be a soft touch. Well, you won't be playing with a guy who's a hero. You'll be up against a guy with a mind gone rotten and a lust for killing! That's the way I was and that's the way I like it! ~ Mickey Spillane

I read all the time ... I read a lot of history books. ~ Mickey Spillane

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book. ~ Mickey Spillane

I'm 82 years old, wherever I go everybody knows me, but here's why ... I'm a merchandiser, I'm not just a writer, I stay in every avenue you can think of. ~ Mickey Spillane

I don't give a damn about reviews. What I like to read are royalty checks. ~ Mickey Spillane

To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.
Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z can, from a certain perspective, appear anally wired.
On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates have chosen to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it's the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup.
Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I've not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill…
Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jackknife ever ready to cut the cords of convention or peel the peach of lust.
A Z is slick, quick, arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance separates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, ~ Tom Robbins

Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still ... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt. ~ Mickey Spillane

I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends. ~ Mickey Spillane

I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien. ~ Mickey Spillane

I'm the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne. And they're all dead ... ~ Mickey Spillane

I'm actually a softie. Tough guys get killed too early ... I've got a full head of hair and don't wear eyeglasses. ~ Mickey Spillane

And if we're talking about hard-boiled detectives, too, what could be more hardboiled than the worldview of Ligotti or Cioran? They make the grittiest of crime writers seem like dilettantes. Next to The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Mickey Spillane seems about as hard-boiled as bubble gum. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I've got all these names ... but my Dad always called me Mick. ~ Mickey Spillane

All this "honest work" kills beauty in man too. It forces men into poor diet, poor choices, poor paths outside the workplace. Everything in life for them, whether they chose so or not, must revolve around their "honest work". No time to research, pick, and cook a proper meal so I have chips and soda again. No time to work out, to worship the sun in peace, to study so I watch television and jerk off in-between beers again. No time to even so much as consider another way of life so I hammer nails into useless thing for useless people in useless place again. You are being scammed, robbed. ~ Mike Ma

The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book. ~ Mickey Spillane

I had gotten a taste for death and found it palatable to the extent that I could never again eat the fruits of a normal civilization. ~ Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins

See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead. Otherwise you don't have a hero. You can't kill a hero. That's why I never let him get older. ~ Mickey Spillane

I was a ruthless bastard with a twisted mind who could look on death and find it pleasant. I could break an arm or smash in a face because it was easier that way than asking questions. I could out-fox the fox with a line of reasoning that laughed at the truth because I was the worst of the lot and never did deserve to live. That's what that damned judge thought anyway. ~ Mickey Spillane

Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar. ~ Mickey Spillane

I read because the women that I liked when I was a teenager lived down in Greenwich Village and they all had those black clothes. The Jules Feiffer women with the black leather bags and the blonde hair and the silver earrings and they all had read Proust and Kafka and Nietzche. And so when I said, 'No, the only thing I've ever read were two books by Mickey Spillane,' they would look at their watch and I was out. So in order to be able to carry on a conversation with these women who I thought were so beautiful and fascinating, I had to read. So I read. But it wasn't something I did out of love. I did it out of lust. ~ Woody Allen

God, but it was fun! It was the way I liked it. No arguing, no talking to the stupid peasants. I just walked into that room with a tommy gun and shot their guts out. They never thought that there were people like me in this country. They figured us all to be soft as horse manure and just as stupid. ~ Mickey Spillane

It was easy,' I said. ~ Mickey Spillane

Guys like you can't escape the city. Hell, you a got a blood contract with this place. You're married to the old girl. ~ Mickey Spillane

I hope you don't have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I don't like people. I don't like any kind of people. When you get them together in a big lump they all get nasty and dirty and full of trouble. So I don't like people including you. That's what a misanthropist is. ~ Mickey Spillane

Critics themselves, they used to tear me up. ~ Mickey Spillane

I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it. ~ Mickey Spillane

Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney. ~ Mickey Spillane

I dont like any of them, because they don't read the books. In Kiss Me Deadly my story is better than his story. Anthony Quinn played in The Lond Wait and he didn't read the book either. ~ Mickey Spillane

People can talk all they want about the Big Ten. About Michigan and Ohio State and Indiana and Kentucky or whatever, but there's no way that compares. They're in different states. Here, we share the same dry cleaners." - Mike Kryzewski ~ Joe Menzer

Leaders make decisions that create the future they desire. ~ Mike Murdock

The Soviet Union could not exist without the image of the empire. The image of the empire could not exist without the image of force. The USSR ended the moment the first hammer pounded the Berlin Wall. ~ Boris Yeltsin

Watch the old man. Watch how the old man keeps the guys who aren't playing happy. ~ Mickey Mantle

Tragically, of the first five women to reach the summit of K2, three died on the descent and two were later to die on other mountains. ~ Mike Trueman

An open mind is like an open window. It lets the fresh air in. ~ Mike Hernacki

If you set up an atmosphere of community and trust, it becomes a tradition. Older team members will establish your credibility with newer ones. Even if they don't like everything about you, they'll say, 'He's trustworthy, committed to us as a team.' ~ Mike Krzyzewski

There is only one exit from the dream: gnosis (enlightenment). When you finally grasp that your existence has been one long dream, both public and private (waking and sleeping, across many different bodies and lifetimes), you transcend the dream. You ~ Mike Hockney

I spend money as if I had it. ~ Mike Todd

To be perfectly honest, I'm competitive. ~ Mike White

Nowadays, the game is all bugged out,
Phony, like back when Hammer tried to come thugged out. ~ Daniel Dumile

By requiring that any surplus in Social Security taxes be returned to the American people in personal savings accounts, the plan ensures that Social Security taxes will be used for Social Security. ~ Mike Pence