Spade: I hope you're not letting yourself be influenced by the guns these pocket-edition desperadoes are waving around, because I've practiced taking guns from these boys before; so we'll have no trouble there.
Sam Spade: [impatiently] Now, let's *talk* about the black bird.
Kasper Gutman: Let's. Mr. Spade, have you any conception of how much money can be got for that black bird?
Sam Spade: No.
Kasper Gutman: Well, sir, if I told you... If I told you *half*... you'd call me a liar.
Sam Spade:
No, not even if I thought so.
Sam Spade: All we've got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy: You know whether you love me or not.
Sam Spade: Maybe I do. I'll have some rotten nights after I've sent you over, but that'll pass.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy: Help me.
Sam Spade: You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. Chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade.'
Brigid O'Shaughnessy: I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it, not at all in what I said. It's my own fault if
you can't believe me now.
Sam Spade: Ah, now you are dangerous.
Sam Spade: If you kill me, how are you going get the bird? And if I know you can't afford to kill me, how are you going to scare me into giving it to you?
Kasper Gutman: Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill.
Sam Spade: Yes, that's... That's true. But, there're none of them any good
unless the threat of death is behind them. You see what I mean? If you start something, I'll make it a matter of your having to kill me or call it off.
Kasper Gutman: That's an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. Because, as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions
carry them away.
Sam Spade: Then the trick from my angle is to make my play strong enough to tie you up, but not make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment.
Kasper Gutman: By gad, sir, you are a character. There's never any telling what you'll say or do next, except that it's bound to be something astonishing.
Wilmer Cook: Keep askin' for it and you're gonna to get it - plenty. I told you to shove off. Shove off.
Sam Spade: People lose teeth talking like that. If you want to hang around, you'll be polite.
[first title card]
Title Card: In 1539, the Knight Templars of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels ~~~~~ but pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day ~~~
Kasper Gutman: Well, sir, what do you suggest? We stand here and shed tears and call each other names... or shall we go to Istanbul?
Joel Cairo: Are you going?
Kasper Gutman: Seventeen years I've wanted that little item and I've been trying to get it. If we must spend another year on the quest... well, sir, it will be an additional
expenditure in time of only... five and fifteen seventeenths percent.
Joel Cairo: I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure's return. Do you have it?
Sam Spade: No.
Joel Cairo: But if it isn't here, why did you risk serious injury to prevent my searching for it?
Sam Spade: Why should I sit around here and let people come in and stick me up?
Joel
Cairo: But certainly it is only natural that I try to save the owner such a considerable expense if possible.