167 Quotes by Dashiell Hammett

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

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

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.

I don t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready. Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

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

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.

You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.