Ross Macdonald > Quotes

“The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.”
― Ross Macdonald

“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.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Blue Hammer

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

“There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Drowning Pool

“A cockroach stepped out from behind the ketchup, gave me a quick impassive once-over, decided that I was of the Brahmin faith, and walked earnestly across the table on errands of his own. Somebody had left a newspaper on the bench beside me, and I picked it up and swatted the cockroach, permitting his soul to transmigrate into the body of a quartermaster.”
― Ross Macdonald, Blue City

“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, The Moving Target

“No one looks at the mountains. But they were there, making them all look silly.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession.”
― Ross Macdonald, Blue City

“The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Underground Man

“I found when I followed the driveway around to the back that behind its imposing front it was just another tract house, as if the architect had tried to combine a southern plantation mansion with the slave quarters.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Underground Man

“as if by behaving modestly and discreetly they could make the fire stay up on the mountain and die there, like an unwanted god.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Underground Man

“All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman’s place is in the home, too?”
“Not my home.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“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, The Moving Target

“Neighborhood grocery stores, coal yards, gas stations, cheap taverns, big old rundown houses, a few churches with blank embarrassed faces.”
― Ross Macdonald, Blue City