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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I’m a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book. – Mickey Spillane
Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney. – 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
I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can’t understand it. – Mickey Spillane
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
