Dashiell Hammett Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

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More Dashiell Hammett quote about:

Writing,

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

#Two #Together #Twenties
“Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Worry #Stories #Tonight
“My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Monkeys #Way #Machinery
“I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel...”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Men #Ferris Wheels #Wheels
“To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Inspirational #Men #People
“What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Writing #Play #Interesting
“I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Thinking #Literature #Influence
“He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Taken
“You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain't one.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Looks #Sides #Bright Side
“I don t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Mind #Trouble
“Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Bunnies #Lettuce
“The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second “you.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Boys #Two #Verbs
“It's sometimes better to pretend I don't hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Sound #Woods #Sometimes
“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.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Girl #Drunk #Want
“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.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Sex #Thinking #Stories
“Our lawyers had their chat with the Supreme Court Justice, and promised to repast the chat to other members of the Supreme Court to find out whether they wanted to hear us out.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Justice #Lawyer #Court
“Nick: "Don't you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?" Nora: "No, thanks." Nick: "Maybe it would if I took one.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Sleep #Thinking #Helping
“I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Love You #Want #Deserve
“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.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Drinking #Men #Doe
“The truth is you don't like the theater except the times when you're in a room by yourself putting the play on paper.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Play #Paper #Rooms
“Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Taken #San Francisco
“I haven't any sort of plans for the future but I reckon things will work out in some manner.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Work Out #Things Will Work Out #Plans
“Three times I have been mistaken for a prohibition agent, but never had any trouble clearing myself.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Three #Agents #Trouble
“The roof might fall in; anything could happen.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Fall #Might #Roof
“With what dope I got I think it fills me in pretty well.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Dope #Thinking #Wells
“Talking is something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Talking #Practice
“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 blond Satan.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Eye #Yellow #Hair
“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

#Yarn #People #Trying
“You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

#Sex #Pay
“I like women. I really like women.”
-- Dashiell Hammett

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