Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready. Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve.

A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.

You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.

I haven't laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit.

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.