Quotes by Ross Macdonald

“He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man.”

“On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession.”

“The walls of books around him dense with the past formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.”

“There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.”

“Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“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 he...”

“Some men spend their lives looking for ways to punish themselves for having been born.”

“The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution.”

“Pour alcohol on a bundle of nerves and it generally turns into a can of worms.”

“In wine was truth, perhaps, but in whisky, the way Hoffman sluiced it down, was an army of imaginary rats climbing your legs.”

“He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man.”

“The walls of books around him dense with the past formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.”

“Nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean wouldn't cure.”

“An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.”

“The delicate sensitivity of a frightened rattlesnake.”

“They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through mountains, cut down a thousand year of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the deser...”

“Deep feeling sounded in her voice. I had no doubt that the feeling was partly sincere. Still, there was something unreal about it. I suspected that she'd been playing tricks with her emotions for a...”

“You have a secret passion for justice. Why don't you admit it?I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people.”

“Money costs too much.”

“The moral beatings that people took from their children, I was thinking, were the hardest to endure and the hardest to escape.”