Explore Quotes by Dashiell Hammett

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

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of_x000D_his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were_x000D_horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases_x000D_above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on_x000D_his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.

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

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.

It's awfully easy to be in love in jail

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

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

To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted.

Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.

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

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

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.

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.

I distrust a man that says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink to much it's because he's not to be trusted when he does.

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.

Brigid: I haven't lived a good life - I've been bad, worse than you could know._x000D_Spade: That's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere.

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

I found I was repeating myself. It is the beginning of the end when you discover you have style.

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.

Who shot him? I asked. The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: Somebody with a gun.

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