124 Quotes by Ross Macdonald

Tourists and transients lived in hotels and motels along the waterfront. Behind them a belt of slums lay ten blocks deep, where the darker half of the population lived and died. On the other side of the tracks – the tracks were there – the business section wore its old Spanish facades like icing on a stale cake.

On the other side of the tracks – the tracks were there – the business section wore its old Spanish facades like icing on a stale cake.

She walked as she owned the world, or had owned it once and lost it but remembered how it felt.

There was some kind of passion between them. It gave off a faint wrong smoky odor, like something burning where it shouldn’t be, arson committed by children playing with matches. I.

We had reached the foot of Sable’s hill. Howell wrestled his car up the climbing curves. The tires shuddered and screeched like lost souls under punishment.

The sun burned like a fire ship on the water, sinking slowly till only a red smoke was left trailing up the sky. A fishing boat was headed into the harbor, black and small against the enormous west. Above its glittering wake a few gulls whirled like sparks which had gone out.

For answer, he threw off the covers, swung his legs over the edge of the high bed, reached for the floor with his bare feet, and stood up tottering. Then he fell forward onto his knees, his head swinging loose, slack as a killed buck.

His eyes held the confident vacancy that comes from the exercise of other people’s power.

She touched his shoulder, very lightly, like a child fingering a forbidden object.