Ross Macdonald Quotes
Top 80 wise famous quotes and sayings by Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Ross Macdonald on Wise Famous Quotes.
Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.
There's a contradiction in your thinking," I said. "If I took your dirty money, you wouldn't be able to trust my honesty.
The problem was to love people, try to serve them, without wanting anything from them. I was a long way from solving that one.
Even with tear gas, tommy guns and a police cordon, there is no way to take a desperate man without risking your life.
We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how we can get unhooked before we drown in the stuff.
I could smell fog even at this level now. It was rolling down from the mountains, flooding out the moon, as well as rising from the sea. The
A young man with an untrimmed beard and rebellious eyes looked like a conscientious objector to everything.
Don't be silly," he said uncertainly. "Now, what's your problem? If you think you're broke, I'm broker, ask my broker.
I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it ourselves.
He made a production out of answering her, marching around to her side of the car, carrying his belly in front of him like a gift.
In wine was truth, perhaps, but in whisky, the way Hoffman sluiced it down, was an army of imaginary rats climbing your legs.
The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.
My half-suppressed Canadian years, my whole childhood and youth, rose like a corpse from the bottom of the sea to confront me.
Some of us start out whole and stay that way.
Some need a spare part or two.
Henry - he was a bits-and-pieces kind of guy
Some need a spare part or two.
Henry - he was a bits-and-pieces kind of guy
Jerkiness isn't as respectable as it used to be, not even in L.A. Which is why they had to build Vegas.
If you can't pass on a little loving-kindness in this world, you might as well be a gopher in a hole.
As if by behaving modestly and discreetly they could make the fire stay up on the mountain and die there, like an unwanted god.
Anton was in his office, short and wide behind the desk in a gabardine suit the color of lemon ice cream. His face was sunlamp brown.
I'm a sharpshooter. I still don't like to kill a man. It's too damn easy to wipe one out and too damn hard to grow one.
All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman's place is in the home, too?"
"Not my home.
"Not my home.
Neighborhood grocery stores, coal yards, gas stations, cheap taverns, big old rundown houses, a few churches with blank embarrassed faces.
Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.
The tea tasted like a clear dark dripping from the past. My grandmother came back with it, in crisp black funeral silks,
daughter?' 'She was a beautiful child.' Mrs Williams's eyes grew misty with the quasi-maternal feelings of a procuress.
The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.
The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.
As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married.
What brings you up to the City? he said when we were inside. To San Franciscans, there's only one city.
You notice things."
"A sexburger like her I notice." The tip of his tongue protruded between his teeth, which were a good grade of plastic.
"A sexburger like her I notice." The tip of his tongue protruded between his teeth, which were a good grade of plastic.
Mrs. Gley came down in a rush. She had on a kind of tea gown whose draperies flew out behind her, like the tail of a blowzy comet.
The apparent facts, if you like. I'm not a philosopher. We lawyers don't deal in ultimate realities. Who knows what they are? We deal in appearances.
I like the sun."
"Do you really? I didn't think you'd go in for simple things like sun. You're the neon type, aren't you?"
"If you say so.
"Do you really? I didn't think you'd go in for simple things like sun. You're the neon type, aren't you?"
"If you say so.
A taste of whiskey had changed her mood, as a touch of acid will change the color of blue litmus paper.