Quotes from Ross MacDonald

How can a man help breaking the law when he don't have money to live on?

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.

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

Money costs too much.

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

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

Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.

She was trouble looking for somebody to happen to.

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

He had pink butterfly ears. The rest of him was still in the larval stage.

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

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

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

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

It was some time since I had gone to sleep in the same room with a girl. Of course, the room was large and reasonably well-lighted, and the girl had other things than me on her mind.

People are trying so hard to live through their children. And the children keep trying so hard to live up to their parents, or live them down. Everybody's living through or for or against somebody else. It doesn't make too much sense, and it isn't working too well.

All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman's place is in the home, too?" "Not my home.

I used to think the world was divided into good people and bad people, that you could pin responsibility for evil on certain definite people and punish the guilty. I'm still going through the motions.

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.

She said surprisingly, in a voice as thin as a flute: Are you a good man? I like to think so, but her candor stopped me. No, I said, I'm not. I keep trying, when I remember to, but it keeps getting tougher every year. Like trying to chin yourself with one hand. You can practice off and on all your life, and never make it.

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

That isn't your real motivation. I know your type. You have a secret passion for justice. Why don't you admit it?" "I have a secret passion for mercy," I said. "But justice is what keeps happening to people.

I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble. I clipped that pitch off short and threw it away. Night streets were my territory, and would be till I rolled in the last gutter.

He hadn't wanted to be helped the way I wanted to help him, the way that helped me.