Quotes from John D. MacDonald

The fact remains, we got the evidence right in front of us, the decay of the nashal moral fiber, mob rule in the streets, violence, punks killing decen' people. Am I right or am I right?

anxious little smile that came and went—a mendicant

The intelligence of a mob can be determined by dividing the lowest IQ present by the number of people in the mob.

I could have listed maybe fifty possible reactions without coming close to the one I got. Her eyes dulled and her narrow nostrils flared wide and her mouth fell into sickness. She lost her posture and stood in an ugly way.

For the expendable marriage, you give the expendable gift.

It's a tricky, complex, indifferent society, Puss. It's a loophole world. And there are a lot of clever animals who know how to reach through the loopholes and pick the pockets of the unsuspecting.

I had to make a guess about what would be right and what would be wrong for her. I had to take a risk. I based the risk on what I know of loneliness, of the need of closeness in loneliness. I stroked her, totally impersonal, the way you soothe a terrified animal. At first she would leap and buck at the slightest touch. After a while there was only a tremor when I touched her, and finally that too was gone. She hiccuped and at last fell down into sleep, curled and spent.

are too many mouths to feed. One million three hundred thousand more every week! And of all the people who have ever been alive on Earth, more than half are living right now. We are gnawing the planet bare

If you look over in that direction, like two hundred yards, you will see some birds walking. Never drive the boat toward where the birds are walking. First rule of navigation.

You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend. Another one will remain an acquaintance for thirty years.

It was to have been a quiet evening at home.

Walk very lightly and carefully, Wade. Look behind every bush.

I just don't know. Maybe I'm good, but that goddamn scale would hesitate a long time before tilting that way.

The wide world is full of likable people who get kicked in the stomach regularly.

The sun was visible from Florida, but it hadn't gotten to me.

He was in a gigantic circular bed, with a pink canopy over it. In all the luxuriant femininity of that big bedroom, George looked shrunken and misplaced, like a dead worm in a birthday cake.

Keep your head down, fella. Do your job. Sell the product, write the contracts, negotiate the loans, attend the closings, bank your share and fatten the Keogh accordingly.

And you can sit out here in the hour before dawn, boy, and think virtuous thoughts and tell yourself how noble you are and all that shit, and you are going to lay back and hang on to the money, because that is the way the world keeps score. Not your way. Not lately.

At last there came the reward for patience, her tremendous inhalation broken into six separate fragments, her whole body listening to itself then, finding, being certain, and then taking with hunger. Later she lay curled languid against my chest, her heart and breathing slow. "Wasn't too soon," she said, a blurred drone. "No, it wasn't." "Sweet," she said. "Ver' sweet." And she nestled down into the sleep of total exhaustion.

The breakfast was rather silent, but not with strain.

She was back in three minutes just to tell me that she couldn't guarantee she wouldn't get a little nutty from time to time, but she felt she was past the pill period, and then she headed back toward the beach, a lissome broad in her mirrored sunglasses, walking on good legs, and she was far younger than her years, yet old as the sea she approached.

The biggest and most important reason in the world is to be together with someone in a way that makes life a little less bleak and solitary and lonesome. To exchange the I for We. In the biggest sense of the word, it's cold outside. And kindness and affection and gentleness build a nice warm fire inside.

If there's no pain and no loss, it's only recreational and we can leave it to the minks. People have to be valued.

I needed a slob summer. The machine was abused. Softness at the waist. Tremor of the hands. Bad tastes in the morning. A heaviness of muscle and bone, a tendency to sigh. Each time you wonder, Can you get it back? The good toughness and bounce and tirelessness, the weight down to a rawhide two oh five, a nasty tendency to sing during the morning shower, the conviction each day will contain wondrous things?