124 Quotes by Ross Macdonald

I found when I followed the driveway around to the back that behind its imposing front it was just another tract house, as if the architect had tried to combine a southern plantation mansion with the slave quarters.

...Miss Seeley came in.... She was a little older, a little thinner. Her tailored pinstriped suit emphasized the boniness of her figure. But she still wore hopeful white ruffles at her wrists and throat.

She didn't look like any motel manager I had ever seen. More likely an actress who hadn't quite made the grade down south, or a very successful amateur tart on the verge of turning pro. Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour.

Sheriff Ostervelt snapped his black case shut and tucked it under his hamlike arm. He went to Mildred, walking like a bear on its hind legs, and laid a large red paw on her shoulder. "Coming along with me, little girl?"She shrank at his touch. "I'll ride with Mr. Archer. He brought me here.

The flagstone terrace overlooked a golf course. At the bottom of its green slopes lay a dazzling band of sea. Twenty or thirty miles out, a string of brown hunchbacked islands lay on the bright horizon like basking tortoises. The woman looked at the Pacific and its islands as if they belonged to her. I found out later that one of them did.

She folded her arms across her breasts and looked at me like a lioness.

What brings you up to the City?" he said when we were inside. To San Franciscans, there's only one city.

People are trying so hard to live through their children. And the children keep trying so hard to live up to their parents, or live them down. Everybody's living through or for or against somebody else. It doesn't make too much sense, and it isn't working too well.

My free hand reached for something to hold on to, and closed on liquid nothing.