Quotes from Dashiell Hammett

If you aren't normal, it's because you're tougher, saner, cooler than normal.

And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it.

He was the perfect soldier: he went where you sent him, and stayed where you put him, and had no idea of his own to keep him from doing exactly what you told him.

I just tell you what happens. I don't explain it.

Gilbert said: "I read somewhere that when habitual criminals are accused of things they didn't do—even little things—they're much more upset by it than other people would be. Do you think that's so, Mr. Charles?" "It's likely.

You ought to have known I'd do it! My voice sounded harsh and savage like a stranger's in my ears. Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?

Siento perderte, y quiero que sepas que no te tendría más cariño si fueras hijo mío. Pero, compréndelo, si se pierde un hijo, siempre es posible tener otro; en cambio, sólo existe un halcón maltés.

Emotions are useless during business hours...

he always got a lot of fun of acting like the other half of a half-wit ? Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse, ch XX

Your playmates sent him?" I asked, nodding at the dead man. "I only talked to him with this," he said, patting the automatic on the bed, "but I reckon they did." "How did it happen?" "It happened simple enough. I heard the door opening, and I switched on the light, and there he was, and I shot him, and there he is.

A bullet kissed a hole in the door-frame close to my noodle.

Yes, but- oh, sweetheart! - it wasn't only like that I would have come back to you sooner or later. From the first instant I saw you I knew... Spade said tenderly: You angel! Well, if you get a good break you will be out of San Quentin in twenty years and you can come back to me then.

What was that joke about a guy being so thin he had to stand in the same place twice to throw a shadow?

When she had finished, he grimaced impatiently. "That's silly. Mamma's not really dangerous. She's just a case of arrested development. Most of us have outgrown ethics and morals and so on. Mamma's just not grown up to them yet.

I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives.

you'll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again

I don't like crooks, and even if I did, I wouldn't like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if I liked crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn't like you.

He went like that," Spade said, "like a fist when you open your hand.

Now I'm going to have my fun. I've got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I'm going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam's apple to ankles.

Studsy returned alone. Maybe I'm wrong, he said as he sat down, but I think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of her right. Morelli said: By the throat. Studsy grinned good-naturedly. No. She's trying to get somewhere. She works hard at her singing lessons and -

That's what it was. He wasn't any more Wynant than I am. You know how it is: we told the Philly police he'd sent a wire from there and broadcasted his description, and for the next week anybody that's skinny and maybe got whiskers is Wynant to half of the State of Pennsylvania.

I told him about the letter Wynant had sent his sister. He said: "He writes a lot of people, don't he?

I told Nora: "I'm not one to suggest that your charm wouldn't make any man turn himself inside out for you, but don't be too sure that guy isn't kidding us." "So it's come to that," she said. "You're jealous of policemen.

Few men get killed. Most of those who meet sudden ends get themselves killed.