If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.
Interpretation
This quote encourages individuals to share their stories, no matter the subject, if they believe they can do so effectively.
Dashiell Hammett's quote emphasizes the importance of storytelling, suggesting that anyone who feels their narrative is significant should share it, irrespective of its content. The mention of various topics like sex, sailors, and mounted policemen illustrates that all stories, regardless of their nature, can have value when told with sincerity and skill.
In practice
A writer might use this quote at a workshop to encourage participants to share their personal experiences.
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.
She grinned at me. 'You got types?' 'Only you darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
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.
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.
How many of the original songs survive intact from the slave cabins? Probably not many in their original form. Time has transformed them like light in a prism. What we hope to present is a version of those spirituals, and they speak not just to black Americans, but to people worldwide.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.
The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness.
It's a pity that if someone who has a really profoundly potent art to share chooses not to or doesn't fit into this very thin slice of what's desirable and marketable, chances are the public will never get a chance to hear what they're doing.
I think it takes a lot of trickery to keep up with the media and its perception of you. I don't know if I have it in me most of the time to care. The music is made first, and the interviews or photos to keep it alive come later as a necessary evil, I suppose.
I regard the theatre as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.
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