Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammettwas an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, screenwriter, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, and the Continental Op...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 May 1894
CitySt Marys County, MD
CountryUnited States of America
wicked brunette type
She grinned at me. 'You got types?' 'Only you darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
inspirational men people
To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted.
good-life innocent spades
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
thinking literature influence
I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.
writing play interesting
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.
sound woods sometimes
It's sometimes better to pretend I don't hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun.
sex pay
You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.
men wheels ferris-wheels
I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel...
monkeys way machinery
My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.
worry tonight littles
Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.
two together four
The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.
grey man neck scratched shot somebody
Who shot him? I asked.The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: Somebody with a gun.
american-author information
Thanks for the information about what we call business.
american-author slapping
Looks like she's been slapping the kid again.