- Doc Fallon: You know what my problem is? I'm a halfway honest man in a nine-tenths dishonest world. What's your problem?
- Hammett: Suicide.
- [takes a drink]
- Doc Fallon: My advice? Don't hesitate.
- Hammett: I was sure I heard you retired.
- Doc Fallon: I heard you stopped drinkin'.
- Hammett: I guess we were both wrong.
- Hammett: I want two things. One, I want my story back, it's not much but its what I do. And two, I want to be left alone.
- Hammett: Would you be dippy enough Angel to spend a little shoe leather?
- Kit Conger: Doing what?
- Hammett: Looking for Gary Salt.
- Kit Conger: Who the hell are you now? Hammett the writer? or Hammett the detective?
- Hammett: I think you left out Hammett the fool.
- Hammett: Kit, this is Eli, last of the IWW organizers
- Kit Conger: Are you really a Wobbly?
- Eli the Taxi Driver: Naw, that's just Hammett talkin'. What I am now is sort of an anarchist, with syndicalist tendencies.
- Hammett: Don't be a simp'; you don't think they're going to let you waltz, do you?... You're going up against one hundred, two hundred, three hundred million dollars. You're going up against the powerhouse, angel - the big steam.
- Hammett: [after pulling Ryan out of a pit underneath a steel grate] Geez, what happened?
- Jimmy Ryan: The deal went a little sour.
- Hammett: [referring to Eli's very large revolver] Where'd you get the artillery, Eli? You should put wheels on it.
- Eli the Taxi Driver: You need a little protection when you drive a hack in Frisco.
- Kit Conger: [laughing uneasily] In San Francisco.
- Eli the Taxi Driver: I hack here, lady; I call it Frisco.