Dashiell Hammett Quotes - Page 2

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

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

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

Strictly speaking, there are no real substitutes for sexual satisfaction

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

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

Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny.

The face she made at me was probably meant for a smile. Whatever it was, it beat me. I was afraid she'd do it again, so I surrendered

Nick: "Don't you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?" Nora: "No, thanks." Nick: "Maybe it would if I took one.

She grinned at me. 'You got types?' 'Only you darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.

You're drunk, and I'm drunk, and I'm just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know. That's the kind of girl I am. If I like a person, I'll tell them anything they want to know. Just ask me. Go ahead, ask me.

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

...What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with Life.

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.

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

It's awfully easy to be in love in jail

The truth is you don't like the theater except the times when you're in a room by yourself putting the play on paper.

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.

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

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

Nora said: 'I love you, Nicky, because you smell nice and know such fascinating people.

I like women. I really like women.

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.

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.