Top 35 Mickey Spillane Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Inspiration is an empty bank account.”

— Mickey Spillane

2. “The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.”

— Mickey Spillane

3. “Mike Hammer drinks beer because I can’t spell Cognac.”

— Mickey Spillane

4. “The most important part of a story is the ending. No one reads a book to get to the middle.”

— Mickey Spillane

5. “I’m a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.”

— Mickey Spillane

6. “I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends.”

— Mickey Spillane

7. “If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.”

— Mickey Spillane

8. “Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle; they read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy any more. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.”

— Mickey Spillane

9. “I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O’Brien.”

— Mickey Spillane

10. “I’m not an author, I’m a writer, that’s all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.”

— Mickey Spillane

11. “If I need something, I’ll invent it.”

— Mickey Spillane

12. “Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture.”

— Mickey Spillane

13. “See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn’t dead, Elvis isn’t dead. Otherwise you don’t have a hero. You can’t kill a hero. That’s why I never let him get older.”

— Mickey Spillane

14. “Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn’t get past Hugo.”

— Mickey Spillane

15. “I’m a country boy. I hate New York. But that’s where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.”

— Mickey Spillane

16. “I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger.”

— Mickey Spillane

17. “Pretty and beautiful are two different things. Only a few women are pretty, but even one who’s not so hot to look at can be beautiful. A lot of guys make mistakes when they turn down a beautiful woman for one who’s just pretty.”

— Mickey Spillane

18. “I’m the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne. And they’re all dead...”

— Mickey Spillane

19. “I don’t like people. I don’t like any kind of people. When you get them together in a big lump they all get nasty and dirty and full of trouble. So I don’t like people including you. That’s what a misanthropist is.”

— Mickey Spillane

20. “Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.”

— Mickey Spillane

21. “Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.”

— Mickey Spillane

22. “Stephen King. Now I’m not crazy about him, but he’s a great a writer.”

— Mickey Spillane

23. “I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn’t use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.”

— Mickey Spillane

24. “I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can’t understand it.”

— Mickey Spillane

25. “Imagine this guy hits Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger and knocks him out. You hit Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger, he’ll beat the crap out of you.”

— Mickey Spillane

26. “I don’t give a damn about reviews. What I like to read are royalty checks.”

— Mickey Spillane

27. “If the public likes you, you’re good. Shakespeare was a common, down-to-earth writer in his day.”

— Mickey Spillane

28. “Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.”

— Mickey Spillane

29. “Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.”

— Mickey Spillane

30. “Now I’m not an author, I’m a writer, that’s all I am.”

— Mickey Spillane

31. “If the public likes you, you’re good.”

— Mickey Spillane

32. “No one likes my books except the public.”

— Mickey Spillane

33. “I try to stay in good physical shape, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink.”

— Mickey Spillane

34. “I was a licensed investigator who knocked off somebody who needed knocking off bad and he couldn’t get to me. So I was a murderer by definition and all the law could do was shake its finger.”

— Mickey Spillane

35. “He killed her and I made a mess of his head. Even the devil won’t recognize him now.”

— Mickey Spillane

36. “He was staring at my face. His eyes couldn’t leave my eyes and his flesh was already dying with the fear inside him. He tried to talk and made only harsh breathing sounds. He raised his hands as if I were something evil and he had to keep me away. I was evil. I was evil for the good. I was evil and he knew it. I was worse than they were, so much worse that they couldn’t stand the comparison. I had one, good, efficient, enjoyable way of getting rid of cancerous Commies. I killed them.”

— Mickey Spillane