Ross Macdonald Quotes

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Passion, People, Justice

  Ross Macdonald (2010). “The Goodbye Look”, p.147, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  51 Copy quote

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Funny, Witty, Powerful

  Ross Macdonald (2011). “The Drowning Pool”, p.28, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  30 Copy quote

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Running, Detectives, Vibrations

  Ross Macdonald (1973). “On crime writing”

  20 Copy quote

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Wall, Book, Past

  19 Copy quote

• Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

  Ross Macdonald

  Lying, Heart, Envy

  14 Copy quote

• An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

  Ross Macdonald

  Gun, Ugly, Terrible

  Ross Macdonald (2010). “The Way Some People Die”, p.230, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

• We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.

  Ross Macdonald

  Broken, Wish, Locks

  Ross Macdonald (1967). “Archer in Hollywood: three exciting novels: The moving target, The way some people die [and] The barbarous coast”

  16 Copy quote

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Writing, Years, Different

  Ross MacDonald (1976). “The Blue Hammer”, G K Hall & Company

  14 Copy quote

• The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up dismal gleams between the boards of the pier. And the whole pier rose and fell in stiff and creaking mimicry, dancing its long slow dance of dissolution. I reached the end and saw no one, heard nothing but my footsteps and the creak of the beams, the slap of waves on the pilings. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the dim water. The nearest land ahead of me was Hawaii.

  Ross Macdonald

  Memories, Moving, Sea

  Ross Macdonald (2012). “The Drowning Pool”, p.183, Penguin UK

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Trouble, Allowance, Members

  Ross Macdonald (2010). “Sleeping Beauty”, p.65, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Trying, Influence, Made

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Responsibility, Thinking, People

  Ross Macdonald (1967). “Archer in Hollywood: Three Exciting Novels: The Moving Target, The Way Some People Die [and] The Barbarous Coast”, New York : Knopf

  8 Copy quote

• The delicate sensitivity of a frightened rattlesnake.

  Ross Macdonald

  Rattlesnakes, Frightened, Sensitivity

  Ross Macdonald (2010). “The Way Some People Die”, p.233, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Writing, Life And Death, Needs

  8 Copy quote

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Wall, Book, Language

  Ross Macdonald (1996). “The Underground Man”, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Men, Getting Older, Likes

  Ross Macdonald (2011). “The Zebra-Striped Hearse”, p.9, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

• The Archer novels are about various kinds of brokenness.

  Ross Macdonald

  Archer, Kind, Novel

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Games, Oil, Car

  Ross Macdonald (2010). “Sleeping Beauty”, p.110, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  7 Copy quote

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

  Ross Macdonald

  Hurt, Moving, Bird

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ross Macdonald

  Hands, Giving, Littles

  Ross Macdonald (1967). “Archer in Hollywood: Three Exciting Novels”

  4 Copy quote

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