When you write, you want ...

When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.
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 Dashiell Hammett

Quotes from the same author

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.
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 Dashiell Hammett
Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken.
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 Dashiell Hammett
The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps.
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 Dashiell Hammett
He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.
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 Dashiell Hammett
Strictly speaking, there are no real substitutes for sexual satisfaction
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 Dashiell Hammett