124 Quotes by Ross Macdonald

Vallon was said to have a Puritan conscience but I had never met his conscience.

It’s interesting to come back to your childhood home. And creepy, too, like becoming very young and very old, both at the same time. The spirit that haunts the house.’ That.

We merged our lonelinesses once again, in something less than love but sweeter than self. I didn’t get home to West Los Angeles after all.

Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there’s no way to hang up.

He placed me in a straight chair against the wall, brought me an ashtray, sat at his desk with his back to the window. He was quick in movement, very still in repose. His bald scalp and watchful eyes made him resemble a lizard waiting for a fly to expose itself.

Don’t be silly,” he said uncertainly. “Now, what’s your problem? If you think you’re broke, I’m broker, ask my broker.

The problem was to love people, try to serve them, without wanting anything from them. I was a long way from solving that one.

We passed a small-boat harbor, gleaming white on blue, and a long pier draped with fishermen. Everything was as pretty as a postcard. The trouble with you, I said to myself: you’re always turning over the postcards and reading the messages on the underside. Written in invisible ink, in blood, in tears, with a black border around them, with postage due, unsigned, or signed with a thumbprint.

It’s interesting to come back to your childhood home. And creepy, too, like becoming very young and very old, both at the same time. The spirit that haunts the house.’ That was how she looked, I thought, in her archaic long skirt – very young and very old, the granddaughter and the grandmother in one person, slightly schizo. She.