"I like women. I really like women"
About this Quote
Hammett’s blunt repetition lands like a wisecrack tossed across a bar: simple words, zero ornament, and a faint dare in the cadence. “I like women” could pass as mild, even polite. “I really like women” doubles down, turning preference into posture. The point isn’t revelation; it’s performance. In Hammett’s hardboiled universe, desire is rarely tender and almost never safe. Women are catalysts, co-conspirators, liabilities, the people who can get you paid, get you killed, or make you do something dumber than both.
The intent feels less like a romantic confession than a character note, the kind of line a tough guy uses to justify a pattern he knows is trouble. The subtext is defensive bravado: I’m not ashamed, I’m not apologizing, and I’m not pretending this doesn’t complicate my judgment. Repetition becomes a tell. It hints at a man trying to convince someone else or himself. If liking women were uncomplicated, he wouldn’t need the second sentence.
Context matters because Hammett wrote during a period when American masculinity was being industrialized into a style: terse, suspicious of sentiment, eager to turn vulnerability into a joke. His fiction made lust and cynicism share the same cigarette. The line reads like an elevator pitch for that sensibility, where admiration can slide into objectification and attraction is another form of risk management. It works because it’s both candid and cagey: two clean sentences that smuggle in an entire worldview about power, appetite, and the costs of wanting.
The intent feels less like a romantic confession than a character note, the kind of line a tough guy uses to justify a pattern he knows is trouble. The subtext is defensive bravado: I’m not ashamed, I’m not apologizing, and I’m not pretending this doesn’t complicate my judgment. Repetition becomes a tell. It hints at a man trying to convince someone else or himself. If liking women were uncomplicated, he wouldn’t need the second sentence.
Context matters because Hammett wrote during a period when American masculinity was being industrialized into a style: terse, suspicious of sentiment, eager to turn vulnerability into a joke. His fiction made lust and cynicism share the same cigarette. The line reads like an elevator pitch for that sensibility, where admiration can slide into objectification and attraction is another form of risk management. It works because it’s both candid and cagey: two clean sentences that smuggle in an entire worldview about power, appetite, and the costs of wanting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
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