Quotes by John D. MacDonald

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

“I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess that we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of ma...”

“It's a tricky, complex, indifferent society, Puss. It's a loophole world. And there are a lot of clever animals who know how to reach through the loopholes and pick the pockets of the unsuspecting.”

“Vulnerability is the curse of the thinking classes.”

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

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

“It is one thing to look at a mistreated boat and another to look at a tomb. The silence of the bay seemed more intense. And I could see the glint of the carrion flies.”

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

“When you look at pictures of people you know are dead, there is something different about the eyes. As if they anticipated their particular fate.It is a visceral recognition. I told myself I was ge...”

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

“Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of m...”

“Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you kno...”

“At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be com...”

“Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.”

“Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.”

“I am wary of a lot of things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons,...”

“These are the playmate years, and they are demonstrably fraudulent. The scene is reputed to be acrawl with adorably amoral bunnies to whom sex is a pleasant social favor. The new culture. And they ...”

“But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on working. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted...”

“...it is like what we have done to chickens. Forced growth under optimum conditions, so that in eight weeks they are ready for the mechanical picker. The most forlorn and comical statements are the...”

“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.”