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.

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.

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.

The aurora of humanity will begin when we learn that love is our only power and kindness is our ineffable religion.

Some people come into your life like a flower. She fills your heart with love, amuses your mind with her beauty, and leaves you with enduring joy because she once touched your life.

At Texas, I was a football player playing baseball. And the way I play I think I still am.

The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner.

Historically, the British have always been rather wary of grand engineering projects - perhaps understandably, given that many of them have been delivered late and over budget.

Treat every person you interact with, with the same sort of attention and respect which you hope they will give to you.

All the wrong people are against it, so it must be right.

It takes resolution to go forth from the ease and beautiful simplicity of a well-formed hypothesis and struggle with amorphous facts.

Our aim was to insure repeat business based on the system's reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator.

The criminal element now calculates that crime really does pay.