John D. MacDonald quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John D. MacDonald

John D. MacDonald Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from John D. MacDonald on Wise Famous Quotes.

It was to have been a quiet evening at home. Home is the Busted Flush, 52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale.

Anxious little smile that came and went - a mendicant

the glue that seems to hold mankind in some kind of lasting stasis is everyone's desire to be useful.

When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.

The breakfast was rather silent, but not with strain.

If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck.

It would be one kind of penance. And there are never enough kinds. Not for him. Not for me. And certainly not for you, my friend.

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

summertime." "I remember it well.

We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.

[Los Angeles] the world's biggest third-class city ...

Never leave anything which can be traced, when you do have a choice.

For once her new placidity was impaired.

Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.

My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.

It is a practical world, Mr. Owen, and we have to do practical things.

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.

For the expendable marriage, you give the expendable gift.

The wide world is full of likable people who get kicked in the stomach regularly.

A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else.

Vulnerability is the curse of the thinking classes.

In all emotional conflicts, the thing you find the most difficult to do, is the thing that you should do.
Meyer's Law

And would not her fastidious litheness take away the heavy taste of the fleshy girls in the Citrus Inn? McGee, the Perfidious.

I just don't know. Maybe I'm good, but that goddamn scale would hesitate a long time before tilting that way.

She went inside and watched him walk back toward sixteen,

In the morning I'm often anti-semantic.

The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm.

[To] me organized religion, the formalities and routines, [is] like being marched in formation to look at a sunset.

She trudged along, dutiful as a naughty child.

For perhaps the first time in my life I appreciated the corrosive effects of total uncertainty.

if you are too unusual, you may turn into a collector's item.

Hascomb snatched an ancient weapon out of his glove compartment. Officers have smuggled them home from the last five wars. The Colt.45 automatic.

never sit in the first row at the ballet.

Please not yet. Those are the three eternal words. Please not yet.

That is the flaw in my personality. Vanity. And your flaw is sentimentality. They are the flaws which will inevitably kill us both.

Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

A nonreader is somebody standing there in a blindfold.

The world is full of damp rocks, with some very strange creatures hiding under them.

I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.

People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness

All thinking is done with the glands. Logic is added later to tidy things up.

every day, not matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility.

He tottered in. In a few moments he came out, hair piece in place. But the haggardness of his face made it look more spurious than before.

Ask for two, and they give you the third free.

All the little gods of irony must whoop and weep and roll on the floors of Olympus when they tune in on the night thoughts of a truly fatuous male.

If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you'd be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.

In spite of the air conditioning, she had filled the lounge with a faint sharp-sweet odor of large overheated girl.

If there's no pain and no loss, it's only recreational and we can leave it to the minks. People have to be valued.

Nothing goes on forever. And if you stay patient, problems tend to go away in time.

The rain had washed the sunset time to a lambent beauty.

The sun was visible from Florida, but it hadn't gotten to me.

Waves can wash away the most stubborn stains, and the stars do not care one way or the other.

Walk very lightly and carefully, Wade. Look behind every bush.

After I had chased the ghastliness of Fancha out of my mind, I settled down to some planning. A trip out to Leavenworth had a deceptive plausibility.

Cathy introduced us. Christine stood there inside her smooth skin, warm and indolent, mildly speculative.

A man with a credit card is in hock to his own image of himself.