How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"We believed your two hundred dollars."
"You mean –?" She seemed to not know what he meant.
"I mean you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth," he explained blandly, "and enough more to make it all right." (4.11)
In Maltese Falcon, most of the characters are motivated by monetary greed, and Spade is no exception. Even though he didn't believe Brigid's story about her missing sister, she paid him enough to keep him quiet. Money talks a lot in this novel.
Quote #2
"Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken" (6.31)
Sam Spade knows that money will get you pretty much anywhere in the world. If you have enough of it, you can buy loyalty, silence, you name it.
Quote #3
"Have you any conception of the extreme, the immeasurable, wealth of the Order at that time?"
"If I remember," Spade said, "they were pretty well fixed."Gutman smiled indulgently. "Pretty well, sir, is putting it mildly." His whisper became lower and more purring. "They were rolling in wealth, sir. You've no idea. None of us has any idea. For years they had prey on the Saracens, had taken nobody knows what spoils of gems, precious metals, silks, ivories—the cream of the cream of the East. That is history, sir. We all know that the Holy Wars to them, as to the Templars, were largely a matter of loot." (13.21)
When Gutman narrates the history of the Maltese falcon to Spade, we learn that it is a story of human greed and the ruthless amassing of immeasurable wealth. The Order is described as "rolling in wealth" from all the loot they accumulated during the Holy Wars. This statuette of the Maltese falcon arose out of this history of plundered treasure, and becomes the ultimate symbol of greed.