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.
For me a stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world.
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
When you get down to it, the way that the music affects you individually is the most important thing, and when you let things like the location of a band get in the way or have an effect on your overview, you're cheating yourself out of a really good time.
The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.
I really knew when I started photographing I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.
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