Dashiell Hammett on Women

“She was a big-boned, full-fleshed, red-haired woman of perhaps twenty-eight, handsome in a rather brutal, sloppy way.”

“Most people—even women—get discouraged after you've caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you've got to be careful or you'll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you're tired of disbelieving her.”

“Men have thought me beautiful and I have played with them. Women are like that. Men have loved me, and doing what I liked with them, I have found men contemptible. And then comes this little fat detective whose name I don't know, and he acts as if i were a hag—an old squaw. Can I help then being piqued into some sort of feeling for him? Women are like that.”