“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.”

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved…" by Dashiell Hammett?
Dashiell Hammett photo
Dashiell Hammett 39
American writer 1894–1961

Related quotes

Miyamoto Musashi photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo

“One of the sayings of Diogenes was that most men were within a finger’s breadth of being mad; for if a man walked with his middle finger pointing out, folks would think him mad, but not so if it were his forefinger.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

Matthew Stover photo
Seamus Heaney photo
Muhammad photo
Seamus Heaney photo

“Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Source: Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996

Chris Colfer photo
Andy Rooney photo
Margaret Atwood photo

“I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way, suspecting no ill, when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head. A poem formed.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

On Writing Poetry (1995)
Context: The day I became a poet was a sunny day of no particular ominousness. I was walking across the football field, not because I was sports-minded or had plans to smoke a cigarette behind the field house — the only other reason for going there — but because this was my normal way home from school. I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way, suspecting no ill, when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head. A poem formed. It was quite a gloomy poem: the poems of the young usually are. It was a gift, this poem — a gift from an anonymous donor, and, as such, both exciting and sinister at the same time. I suspect this is the way all poets begin writing poetry, only they don't want to admit it, so they make up more rational explanations. But this is the true explanation, and I defy anyone to disprove it.

John Heywood photo

“I perfectly feele even at my fingers end.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part I, chapter 6.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Related topics