Dashiell Hammett Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

I haven't laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.

Dashiell Hammett
I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve.

Dashiell Hammett
But where knowledge of trickery is evenly distributed, honesty not infrequently prevails.

Dashiell Hammett
"Tall-over six feet-and one of the thinnest men I've ever seen. He must be about fifty now and his hair was almost white when I knew him. Usually needs a haircut, ragged brindle mustache, bites his fingernails." I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.

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

Dashiell Hammett
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.

Dashiell Hammett
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.

Dashiell Hammett
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.

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

Dashiell Hammett
That's the part of it I [Sam Spade] always liked. He [Flitcraft] adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to their not falling.

Dashiell Hammett
My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.

Dashiell Hammett
"How do you feel?"
"Terrible. I must have gone to bed sober."

Dashiell Hammett
There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye.

Dashiell Hammett
Our conversations have not been such that I am anxious to continue them in private.

Dashiell Hammett
I don't like eloquence. If it isn't effective enough to pierce your hide, it's tiresome, and if it is effective enough, it muddles your thoughts.

Dashiell Hammett
His features were small, in keeping with his stature, and regular. His skin was very fair. The whiteness of his cheeks was as little blurred by any considerable growth of beard as by the glow of blood. His clothing was neither new nor of more than ordinary quality, but it, and his manner of wearing it was marked by a hard masculine neatness.

Dashiell Hammett
"Remember, I've got no idea what this is all about," said the girl when they were in the living room, a narrow room, where blue fought with red without ever compromising on purple.

Dashiell Hammett