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

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.

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.

You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain't one.

A budding fashionista even at four, I would capture the little lizards and latch them, still living, onto my earlobes as earrings. Most girls wouldn't touch them, I thought they completed the outfit.

If valleys are the dimples on the face of the earth, as Steven King once said, then Silicon Valley is the deepest, most sparkling dimple of them all.

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.

A throne is God's purpose for you; a cross is God's path for you; faith is God's plan for you.

The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.

You never really learn much from hearing yourself talk.

You can increase your problem-solving skills by honing your question-asking ability.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.