168 Quotes by John D. MacDonald

He’d had a full measure of good bourbon and a fine dinner and probably some excellent brandy. It had dulled his mind slightly, and he was aware of that dullness and was consequently more careful and more suspicious than he would have been sober. He refused a drink. He lowered himself into a comfortable chair and took his time lighting his pipe.

A sulphur sun pierced the gloom, and the rain stopped and I drove to the hospital.

Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave.

The fact remains, we got the evidence right in front of us, the decay of the nashal moral fiber, mob rule in the streets, violence, punks killing decen’ people. Am I right or am I right?

The ones that swear off, most of them they go back onto it sooner or later, get pig drunk and locked up.” “Something special you’ve got against drunks, Sheriff?” “Married to one for a long time. Too long. She finally drove into a tree one night.

It’s no good telling somebody they’re trying too hard. It’s very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.

The breakfast was rather silent, but not with strain.

Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn’t happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?

Victims, he thought, were birds and animals and people who arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time, usually in too big a hurry.