Mickey Spillane Quotes

I`m a country boy. I hate New York. But that`s where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.

Stephen King. Now I`m not crazy about him, but he`s a great a writer.

When I started the paperback market, there were only a few good writers, now the market`s loaded... you don`t know which one to take.

Imagine this guy hits Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger and knocks him out. You hit Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger, he`ll beat the crap out of you.

If the public likes you, you`re good.

Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn`t get past Hugo.

Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.

I dont like any of them, because they don`t read the books. In Kiss Me Deadly my story is better than his story. Anthony Quinn played in The Lond Wait and he didn`t read the book either.

But at my age, you start to get tired.

I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger.

My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I`ve got all these names... but my Dad always called me Mick.

I`m a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn`t dead, Elvis isn`t dead. Otherwise you don`t have a hero. You can`t kill a hero. That`s why I never let him get older.

Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn`t. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.

If the public likes you, you`re good. Shakespeare was a common, down-to-earth writer in his day.

Now I`m not an author, I`m a writer, that`s all I am.

I read all the time... I read a lot of history books.

If you`re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he`s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

If I need something, I`ll invent it.

Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture.

Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.

I try to stay in good physical shape, I don`t smoke, I don`t drink.

I`m 82 years old, wherever I go everybody knows me, but here`s why... I`m a merchandiser, I`m not just a writer, I stay in every avenue you can think of.

I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O`Brien.

I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn`t use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it`s a letdown, they won`t buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can`t understand it.

Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.