Ross Macdonald Quotes

I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world of disasters.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write each other letters once a year.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

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.

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 found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it our ourselves.

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.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

The Archer novels are about various kinds of brokenness.

The delicate sensitivity of a frightened rattlesnake.

I like a little danger. Tame danger, controlled by me. It gives me a sense of power, I guess, to take my life in my hands and know damn well I’m not going to lose it.

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

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.

I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it ourselves.

Above all, we pray that they will make the journey from selfishness to true love. Whether together or single, this is a journey we all have to make. In a sense it is the real journey of life.

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

The past was filling the room like a tide of whispers.

I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people.

No one looks at the mountains. But they were there, making them all look silly.

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.

Flames entered the room like dancers, orange-colored and whirring.

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.

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

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