Mickey Spillane Quotes

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Knowledge, Baseball, Voice, Writer)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane

"Where I am they can smell out a hurricane. My house survived Hurricane Hazel, but it didn't get past Hugo."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Past)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Dad, Mother, Father, Churches, Names)

"If the public likes you, you're good."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Public)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: End, First, Mystery)

"Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Now, Writer)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: America, Books, Famous, First, Writing)

"Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Now, Writer)

"I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Fear)

"If I need something, I'll invent it."
- Mickey Spillane

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Heroes)

"Critics themselves, they used to tear me up."
- Mickey Spillane

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Name, Names)

"Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: History, Names, Want)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Books)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Kiss, Books)

"I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: People, Hollywood, Self)

"I read all the time... I read a lot of history books."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: History, Time, Books)

"I try to stay in good physical shape, I don't smoke, I don't drink."
- Mickey Spillane

"I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: 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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Old, Writer, Years)

"I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Writer)

"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."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Country, Hate)