Dashiell Hammett Quotes

“He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.”

Source: The Maltese Falcon

“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.”

Source: The Maltese Falcon

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

Chap. 11, "The Fat Man"
Dialogue between the characters Kasper Gutman (the "fat man") and Sam Spade.
Source: The Maltese Falcon (1930)
Context: "We begin well, sir," the fat man purred … "I distrust a man that says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink too much it's because he's not to be trusted when he does. … Well, sir, here's to plain speaking and clear understanding. … You're a close-mouthed man?"
Spade shook his head. "I like to talk."
"Better and better!" the fat man exclaimed. "I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice."

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”

Source: The Maltese Falcon

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”

Spade
Source: The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Dashiell Hammett Quotes

“He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.”

Source: The Thin Man

“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.”

Source: The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett book Red Harvest

Source: Red Harvest

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”

“"How do you feel?"
"Terrible. I must have gone to bed sober."”

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

Nora & Nick
Source: The Thin Man (1929)

“"You got types?"
"Only you, darling-lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."”

Source: The Maltese Falcon

“I don t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.”

Nora & Nick
Source: The Thin Man (1929)

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

Dashiell Hammett book Red Harvest

Source: Red Harvest

“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.”

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

Source: The Thin Man

“Emotions are useless during business hours.”

Source: The Maltese Falcon

“Did it ever occur to you that everybody is more or less afraid of nearly everything, and that courage isn't a damn thing but a habit of not dodging things because you're afraid of them?”

"Zigzags of Treachery" (published in Black Mask, 1 March 1924)
Short Stories

“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 blonde Satan.”

"The Cure" (unpublished story, first printed in The Hunter and Other Stories in 2013)
Short Stories

“All successful bunko men come in time to believe the world, except for themselves, is populated with a race of human sheep who may be trusted to conduct themselves with true sheeplike docility.”

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

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

"Zigzags of Treachery" (published in Black Mask, 1 March 1924)
Short Stories

“"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.”

Nick Charles
The Thin Man (1929)

“"You’re a damn good man, sister," he said and went out.”

"The Assistant Murderer" (published in Black Mask, February 1926)
Short Stories

“If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.”

Spade
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

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

"The Second-Story Angel" (published in Black Mask, 15 November 1923)
Short Stories

“She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.”

Cairo
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“"I’ve thrown myself on your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost.What else is there?" She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried angrily: "Can I buy you with my body?"”

Nick Charles
The Thin Man (1929)

“But where knowledge of trickery is evenly distributed, honesty not infrequently prevails.”

Bridgid
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs rolling the paper’s inner edge down and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper cylinder’s ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching their ends while right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spade’s mouth.”

"Nightmare Town" (Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 27, 1924)
Short Stories

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. 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. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“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.”

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“She was tall and pleasantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.”

"Zigzags of Treachery" (published in Black Mask, 1 March 1924)
Short Stories

“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.”

Description of Brigid O'Shaughnessy
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“Stop, you idiot!" I bawled at her. Her face laughed over her shoulder at me. She walked without haste to the door, her short skirt of gray flannel shaping itself to the calf of each gray wool-stockinged leg as its mate stepped forward. Sweat greased the gun in my hand. When her right foot was on the doorsill, a little chuckling sound came from her throat. "Adieu!" she said softly.
And I put a bullet in the calf of her leg. She sat down--plump! Utter surprise stretched her white face. It was too soon for pain. I had never shot a woman before. I felt queer about it.
"You ought to have known I'd do it!”

Description of Wilmer, the gunsel
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Dashiell Hammett book The Gutting of Couffignal

My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger's in my ears. "Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?"
final lines, The Gutting of Couffignal (published in Black Mask, December 1925)
Short Stories

“I didn't know then, and I don't know now, whether she was the owner of the world's best poker face or was just naturally stupid, but whichever she was, she was thoroughly and completely it.”

“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.”

"Women, Politics and Murder" (published in Black Mask, September 1924; retitled "Death on Pine Street" when reprinted in the first anthology of Continental Op stories, The Continental Op, published in 1945; subsequent reprintings have used the latter title for this story)
Short Stories

“That’s why I don’t very often drink, or even smoke. I want to try cocaine, though because that’s suppose to sharpen the brain, isn’t it?”

I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.
Nick Charles
The Thin Man (1929)

“I’ve thrown myself on your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost.What else is there?”

Gilbert Wynant
The Thin Man (1929)