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"I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of."
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Exlpore more Writing quotes
"The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments."
"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done."
"Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing."
"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."
"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it."
"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine."
Explore more quotes by Dashiell Hammett
"Our lawyers had their chat with the Supreme Court Justice, and promised to repast the chat to other members of the Supreme Court to find out whether they wanted to hear us out."
"People always say things like, Oh, well, he was suffering so much that he was better off dying. But that's not true. You're always better off living."
"It's sometimes better to pretend I don't hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun."
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