167 Quotes by Dashiell Hammett

Nora was eating a piece of cold duck with one hand and working on a jig-saw puzzle with the other when I got home."I thought you'd gone to live with her," she said. "You used to be a detective: find me a brownish piece shaped something like a snail with a long neck.""Piece of duck or puzzle?...

...Our friend Nunheim was filled full of .32s just about an hour after he copped the sneak on us - deader'n hell. The pills look like they come from the same gun that cut down the Wolf dame. The experts are matching 'em up now. I guess he wishes he'd stayed and talked to us.

She tilted her head to the right. "You didn't even tell me you had taken the case.""I had done what? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I hadn't and haven't. My getting shot ought to prove I was an innocent bystander.""Does it hurt much?""It itches. I forgot to have the dressing changed this afternoon.""Wasn't Nora utterly terrified?""So was I and so was the guy that shot me. There's Halsey. I haven't spoken to him yet.

Emotions are useless during business hours...

Я не доверяю людям, которые остерегаются пить. Если человек боится напиться, значит, он не доверяет себе («Мальтийский сокол»)

Alice opened the door when I rang. She had on green pyjamas and held a hairbrush in one hand. She looked wearily at Quinn and spoke wearily: "Bring it in."I took it in and spread it on a bed. It mumbled something I could not make out and moved one hand feebly back and forth, but its eyes stayed shut.

...What do you do with all your money?""Me and the French hoard gold.

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.

...I guess I can put two and two together.""Sometimes the answer's four," I said, "and sometimes it's twenty-two...