John D. MacDonald quotes

John D. MacDonald was an American author, best known for his crime and suspense novels, particularly the Travis McGee series. His storytelling and character development left a lasting mark on modern American literature. He influenced generations of writers with his unique blend of mystery, realism, and social commentary. Here are 47 of his quotes:

The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.

John D. MacDonald

Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he'll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he's going to see.

John D. MacDonald

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

John D. MacDonald

I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.

John D. MacDonald

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

John D. MacDonald

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

John D. MacDonald

Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.

John D. MacDonald

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

John D. MacDonald

It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.

John D. MacDonald

I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique.

John D. MacDonald

By feeling insecure about our making love, Nina, you make the inference that we are a pair of cheap people involved in some cheap pleasant friction. Pull on the pants and walk away, adding up the score. I think we're interested in each other, involved with each other, curious about each other. This was a part of exploring and learning. When it's good you learn something about yourself too. If the spirit is involved, if there is tenderness and respect and awareness of need, that's all the morality I care about.

John D. MacDonald

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 maintaining it.

John D. MacDonald

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 know he never will.

John D. MacDonald

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.

John D. MacDonald

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

John D. MacDonald

What we tried to do, out of mutual loneliness, was make more out of the relationship than it could support. Then it becomes pretend, and you are both saying things cribbed from half-forgotten books and plays. So the structure slowly topples over, like vanilla ice cream piled too high. And the end of it there was an obscure impulse to shake hands.

John D. MacDonald

Aside from an unwholesome taste for string quartets, and a certain gullibility about predigested sociology, she passed the McGee test with about a B+. Hell, an A-. Maybe somebody had given her the Vance Packard books.

John D. MacDonald

Nina was always loved. Maybe that's a bad thing. It gives people that terrible confidence that the world is going to give them the chance to fulfill themselves.

John D. MacDonald

When a woman forgets gossip, McGee, she is nearing the end of her road.

John D. MacDonald

And that, of course, is the tragic flaw in the narcotics laws - that possession of marijuana is a felony. Regardless of whether it is as harmless as some believe, or as evil and vicious as others believe, savage and uncompromising law is bad law, and the good and humane judge will jump at any technicality that will keep him from imposing a penalty so barbaric and so cruel. The self-righteous pillars of church and society demand that "the drug traffic be stamped out" and think that making possession a felony will do the trick. Their ignorance of the roots of the drug traffic is as extensive as their ignorance of the law.

John D. MacDonald

Statistically it is probably the one city in the world where the most people have been killed in arguments over professional athletes.

John D. MacDonald

She bets the doubles and the parlays, a guaranteed way to stay busted.

John D. MacDonald