Top 100 Dashiell Hammett Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “With what dope I got I think it fills me in pretty well.”

— Dashiell Hammett

52. “Just you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.”

— Dashiell Hammett

53. “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.”

— Dashiell Hammett

54. “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.”

— Dashiell Hammett

55. “We believed your two hundred dollars.”

— Dashiell Hammett

56. “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

57. “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

58. “And when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it.” – Detective Sam Spade.”

— Dashiell Hammett

59. “Nora stopped drinking to ask: “Did Wynant really steal it?” “Tch, tch, tch,” I said. “This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man.”

— Dashiell Hammett

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

— Dashiell Hammett

61. “It was a good trick, only it didn’t work. In.”

— Dashiell Hammett

62. “If you aren’t normal, it’s because you’re tougher, saner, cooler than normal.”

— Dashiell Hammett

63. “I just tell you what happens. I don’t explain it.”

— Dashiell Hammett

64. “The man whose name I had not caught was saying: “Comes the revolution and we’ll all be lined up against the wall – first thing.” He seemed to think it was a good idea.”

— Dashiell Hammett

65. “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.”

— Dashiell Hammett

66. “The Killer Inside Me.”

— Dashiell Hammett

67. “Murder doesn’t round out anybody’s life except the murdered’s and sometimes the murderer’s.”

— Dashiell Hammett

68. “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.”

— Dashiell Hammett

69. “How do you feel?” “Terrible. I must’ve gone to bed sober.”

— Dashiell Hammett

70. “He came over to see her, so he said. She didn’t go home last night and he thought she was still here.” She laughed. “He wasn’t surprised at not finding her, though. He said she was always wandering off somewhere, she has dromomania, which comes from a mother fixation and is very interesting. He said Stekel claims people who have it usually show kleptomaniac impulses too, and he’s left things around to see if she’d steal them, but she never has yet that he knows of.”

— Dashiell Hammett

71. “A woman stood between them holding a sizzling skillet in her hand. She was a big-boned, full-fleshed, red-haired woman of perhaps twenty-eight, handsome in a rather brutal, sloppy way.”

— Dashiell Hammett

72. “Three times I have been mistaken for a prohibition agent, but never had any trouble clearing myself.”

— Dashiell Hammett

73. “I suppose you’ll see her. You’ll be disappointed at first. Then without being able to say how or when it happened, you’ll find you’ve forgotten your disappointment, and the first thing you know you’ll be telling her your life’s history, and all your troubles and hopes.”

— Dashiell Hammett

74. “You’re like everybody else: some people like you, some people don’t, and some have no feeling about it one way or the other.”

— Dashiell Hammett

75. “Men have thought me beautiful and I have played with them. Women are like that. Men have loved me, and doing what I liked with them, I have found men contemptible. And then comes this little fat detective whose name I don’t know, and he acts as if i were a hag – an old squaw. Can I help then being piqued into some sort of feeling for him? Women are like that.”

— Dashiell Hammett

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

— Dashiell Hammett

77. “You might as well take your punishment and get it over with.”

— Dashiell Hammett

78. “I had seen the girl somewhere before. She was a slender girl in a glistening blue gown that exhibited a generous spread of front, back and arms that were worth showing. She had a mass of dark brown hair above an oval face of the color that pink ought to be. Her eyes were wide-set and of a gray shade that wasn’t altogether unlike the shadows on polished silver that the poet had compared them to. “The Girl With The Silver Eyes.”

— Dashiell Hammett

79. “Sam Spade: You’re a good man, sister.”

— Dashiell Hammett

80. “Presently she said: “It’s none of my business, Nick, but what do people think of me?” “You’re like everybody else: some people like you, some people don’t, and some have no feeling about it one way or the other.”

— Dashiell Hammett

81. “Do you think my father killed her, Nick?” “No,” I said. “Why should I?” “Well, the police have – Listen, she was his mistress, wasn’t she?” I nodded. “When I knew them.” She stared at her glass while saying, “He’s my father. I never liked him. I never liked Mamma.” She looked up at me. “I don’t like Gilbert.” Gilbert was her brother. “Don’t let that worry you. Lots of people don’t like their relatives.”

— Dashiell Hammett

82. “Sam Spade: When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it.”

— Dashiell Hammett

83. “Was she jealous?” “She was,” he said, not yelling now, “and domineering, and spoiled, and suspicious, and greedy, and mean, and unscrupulous, and deceitful, and selfish, and damned bad – altogether damned bad!”

— Dashiell Hammett

84. “Plans are all right sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes just stirring things up is all right – if you’re tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you’ll see what you want when it comes to the top.”

— Dashiell Hammett

85. “I don’t,” he said, “and that’s a fact. I just can’t size them up at all. This Mrs. Jorgensen, now, what is she?” “A blonde.”

— Dashiell Hammett

86. “Emotions are useless during business hours...”

— Dashiell Hammett

87. “It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.”

— Dashiell Hammett

88. “She’s being stupid and she’s sure she’s being very clever, and that’s a nuisance, but I don’t think I hate her.”

— Dashiell Hammett

89. “He said: “Now there’s another thing: I had some morphine I was experimenting with and somebody stole it, about twenty grains.” “Experimenting how?” “Taking it. I wanted to study the effects.” “And how’d you like them?” I asked. “Oh, I didn’t expect to like it. I just wanted to know about it. I don’t like things that dull my mind. That’s why I don’t very often drink, or even smoke. I want to try cocaine, though, because that’s supposed to sharpen the brain, isn’t it?”

— Dashiell Hammett

90. “The chief winked at me, an athletic wink in which all his facial muscles took part...”

— Dashiell Hammett

91. “Have it your own way,” she said, “but I always thought detectives waited until they had every little detail fixed in – ” “And then wonder why the suspect’s had time to get to the farthest country that has no extradition treaty.”

— Dashiell Hammett

92. “You’re never satisfied until you’ve got two buts and an if attached to everything.”

— Dashiell Hammett

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

— Dashiell Hammett

94. “Are you asleep?” I said I was. She lit a cigarette for me, one for herself. “Don’t you ever think you’d like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it?”

— Dashiell Hammett

95. “I said: ‘All right, talk, but do you mind putting the gun away? My wife doesn’t care, but I’m pregnant.”

— Dashiell Hammett

96. “I’d rather lie to him than have him think I’m lying.”

— Dashiell Hammett

97. “Margaret’s throat had some swollen thing in it. Fog blurred everything but the charging red face. An unvoiced whimper shook her breast. She wanted to run to him as to a lover. She wanted to run from him as from a ravisher. She stood very still in her doorway, smiling demurely with dry, hot mouth.”

— Dashiell Hammett

98. “What was her fearsome secret?” I told her what Dorothy had told me. “It sounds like a lot of hooey.” “Why?” “Why not? Everything else we’ve got from them has been hooey.”

— Dashiell Hammett

99. “You like Nick a lot, don’t you, Nora?” Dorothy asked. “He’s an old Greek fool, but I’m used to him.” “Charles isn’t a Greek name.” “It’s Charalambides,” I explained. “When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long – too much trouble to write – and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.”

— Dashiell Hammett

100. “His eyes burned yellowly.”

— Dashiell Hammett