People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...

By and large, I feel that the more interesting work in the field of murder is done by amateurs. They are people who perform their work with dignity and good taste, leavened with a sense of the grotesque. There is polite and wholesome mayhem, practiced by civilized people, and I personally enjoy it.

Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.

...Murder, I have often noticed, is a great matchmaker.

What are murderers like? Some of them, have been thoroughly nice chaps.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders

Hammett wrote at first (and almost to the end) for people with a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there. Violence did not dismay them; it was right down their street. Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish. He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes

The creation of a painting takes as much trickery and premeditation as the commitment of a crime.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction:

Simply to participate.

If one could order a crime as one does a dinner, what would you choose? . . . Let’s review the menu. Robbery? Frogery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder — red-blooded murder — with trimmings, of course.

When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, wither do we turn? To the murder column; and there we are rarely disappointed.

A murderer was a worthy companion.