“Brigid O'Shaughnessy: I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know. Sam Spade You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd nev...”

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

“Yes,' Spade growled. 'And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it.' He released Cairo's wrist and with a thick open hand struck the side of his face three times savagely.”

“He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.”

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted pol...”

“I found I was repeating myself. It is the beginning of the end when you discover you have style.”

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”

“Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.”

“Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information? Bones asked, getting back to the subject. You to take me, she replied at once. Not gonna happen! I spat, squ...”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall...”

“If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics fr...”

“Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.”