John D. MacDonald quotes - page 2

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:

Three cents' worth of squeeze bottles, plus two cents' worth of homogenized goo, plus prime-time television equals 28 million annual sales at 69 cents each. This is the heartbeat of industrial America.

John D. MacDonald

He had detected a certain sensitivity, a capacity for imagination, in the the girl in New York. But the years and the roads, the bars and the cars and the beds and the bottles - they all have flinty edges, and they are the cruel upholstery in the dark tunnel down which the soul rolls and tumbles until no more abrasion is possible, until the ultimate hardness is achieved. So here she sat, having achieved the bland defensive heartiness of a ten-dollar whore.

John D. MacDonald

Any man who outgrows the myths of childhood is ninety-nine percent aware and convinced of his own mortality.

John D. MacDonald

In many ways life is less random than we think.

John D. MacDonald

People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness.

John D. MacDonald

Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.

John D. MacDonald

Night and gin and music-the right setting for peeling off the thin clinging layers of bullshit and finding one's way down closer to the essential self.

John D. MacDonald

Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?

John D. MacDonald

We're all children. We invent the adult facade and don it and try to keep the buttons and the medals polished. We're all trying to give such a good imitation of being an adult that the real adults in the world won't catch on.

John D. MacDonald

It isn't foolish or wicked to enjoy. Wickedness is hurting people on purpose.

John D. MacDonald

Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worthy of the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave. I love you can be said only two ways.

John D. MacDonald

I can bend my own rules way, way over, but there is a place where I finally stop bending them.

John D. MacDonald

Education is something that should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefore.

John D. MacDonald

A devoted technician is seldom an educated man. He can be a useful man, a contented man, a busy man. But he has no more sense of the mystery and wonder and paradox of existence than does one of those chickens fattening itself for the mechanical plucking, freezing and packaging.

John D. MacDonald

I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension.

John D. MacDonald

... there are people who try to look as if they are doing a good and thorough job, and then there are the people who actually damn well do it, for its own sake.

John D. MacDonald

...it isn't foolish or wicked to enjoy. Wickedness is hurting people on purpose. I love what you are and who you are and how you are. You give me great joy. And you make horrible coffee.

John D. MacDonald

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 are indeed present and available, in exhausting quantity, but there is a curious tastelessness about them. A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of much value to anyone else. They become a pretty little convenience, like a guest towel. And the cute little things they say, and their dainty little squeals of pleasure and release are as contrived as the embroidered initials on the guest towels. Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worthy of the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave. I love you can be said only two ways.

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. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset. Crime pays a lot better. I can bend my own rules way, way over, but there is a place where I finally stop bending them. I can recognize the feeling. I've been there a lot of times. From now on, Lawton Hisp was not going to have a very nice life. They might never come after him, but it just wasn't going to be very joyous from now on. Happy New Year, Mister Hisp.

John D. MacDonald