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

I don t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.

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

Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.

I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, its possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.

My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.

Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny.

I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel.

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

The sound circulated like an autonomous being whose tentacles needed to experience a sensitive awareness of the terrain.

To my editors, I graciously thank you. I now know “is” and “was” aren't the same thing. It's the periods and commas that got me. Can't see the darn things.

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

I'm gonna have to start winning some of the matches to call it a rivalry!

I don't see a point in advertising my marital status when men don't. Completely ridiculous.

Bigamy is two rites that make a wrong.

Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.

I feel like I try not to limit myself. So every experience so far, I've just gone headlong into.

The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepen his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.

What you see is evidence of what you believe.