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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 any more. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

— Mickey Spillane

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More quotes by Mickey Spillane

Those big-shot writers … could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.

The Making of a Bestseller: From Author to Reader (1999)

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.

We brought a man back who should have died long ago. The present can't stand a man like that anymore. Now they want indecision and compromise and reluctance and fear.

The Snake (1964)

I don't care what the editor likes or dislikes, I care what the people like.

Crime Time interview (2001)

Then, suddenly, you're there, outside a dark-faced building, a brownstone anachronism that stares back dully with the defiant expression of the moronic and you have an impending sense of being challenged

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mickey Spillane (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.