Quotes by Mickey Spillane

• Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture.
• 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.
• 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.
• Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn't get past Hugo.
• 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.
• If the public likes you, you're good.
• 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.
• Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.
• 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.
• Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer.
• I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien.
• If I need something, I'll invent it.
• 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.
• Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.
• 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.
• Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.
• 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.
• I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it.
• I read all the time... I read a lot of history books.
• I try to stay in good physical shape, I don't smoke, I don't drink.
• I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger.
• 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'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.