Cherry Valance > Cherry 's Quotes

“Always before, it had been Mr. McClintock. Maybe guys without shirts revert to first names.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“As I walked behind her I became aware that in spite of her being a scrawny type, she wagged very pleasantly and cutely in the blue demin outfit, giving me a sort of vague suicidal hope that this was one of those tabloid jobs where the boss’s young wife picks a playmate out of the office.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“I just plain don’t know how to ask you, Andy.” “Try English.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“She wore a fawn-colored skirt, sandals, and a white blouse like cake frosting.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“The air in the office had that pre-thunder feeling, as though a spark would jump off your finger if you reached for a light switch.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“I admired the way the narrow waist made a double concave line, like parentheses turned the wrong way—) (—and farther down the parentheses turned the right way ( ),”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“Good Lord, Andrew Hale McClintock, straighten up. Have you got to go around lusting after every female you see? Keep this up and they’ll come after you with nets. Keep this up and you’ll start following them on the street, mumbling and leering and wiping your chin on your sleeve. Go fishing, Andrew. Indulge in some fine open-air manly sport and take your little imaginings off this fine new secretary’s fine new frame.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“It’s one of those situations where anything you say sounds as if they’d start selling soap just after you finished.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“A stupid fly kept sitting on me.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“I saw that picture a lot of times, and through the bottoms of a lot of glasses.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“that kind of girl brings trouble wherever she works. Oh, I’m not saying she isn’t nice enough to speak to. So polite and nice butter wouldn’t melt. But I always say these tropics can do something to nice girls to make them forget their upbringing, and forget plain decency.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“I was that guy … that fella shot with luck, that superbly happy jerk named Andrew Hale McClintock.”
― John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide

“Doxie had brown hair, sleepwalking mannerisms, and looked about thirteen years old.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“And I kept thinking of Kathy Keats and how her back had felt under my hands, as if I could snap it like a stick.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“All the secretaries have the word to give him the brush job. Show biz, darling.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“We stood beside the car with the snow coming down, big wet flakes that caught in her hair.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“When she had a chance, she would buy a half dozen magazines. She would leaf through them very quickly, like an illiterate looking at the pictures, and drop them out the window one at a time as she finished them.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“I don’t know, Kathy. There’s all the pressure to conform. I’m not ready to play on the team.” “Kicks? Is that what you want?”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“Once you have destroyed somebody, and there’s no way to put the pieces together, and you know you’re going to live with a funny kind of remorse the rest of your life anyway, you can maybe dilute remorse through more destruction.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“But I know what would happen to this kind of a journal. She would riffle it, see there was no art work, and drop it out the car window and go to work on her nails, or pick a fight with John, or curl into a tiny and fragrant cat nap.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“I know, sir. With desires and aspirations and an immortal soul. But in the scheme of things, that joker was just about as significant as a gob of spit on a wet sidewalk, and just about as attractive.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“She came swinging toward me, a lovely little doll, and I had to grin at her, but her mouth did not move in response. She took off her glasses as I opened the car door for her. Her eyes were ten thousand years old. “Buy something pretty?” I asked her.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“There was a sense of isolation about that house. It was as if the concrete steps were a rope ladder, and when you were up there, they were pulled up and you were alone.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“On her brows and her strong hands are those small random scars acquired by those whose lives are spent close to the edge of darkness.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“This—is one of them?” “They beat and kicked and stabbed a stranger to death, Kemp. For no reason. What would you expect one of them to look like?” “I—don’t know. Like this, I guess.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“They’ll put you way out in front, college boy. They’ll get you off the curb and into the parade.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“What’ll they do to a square?” Nan asked. “That’s what we’re checking out, man,”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“Nan was loaded with dusky glamour.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“You need trouble?” he asked. “No. That’s what I was saying, fella. I don’t want trouble.” He turned away. Shack caught him in one stride, caught him by the forearm and spun him around. “I got mixed up,” Shack said. “I thought you were asking for trouble.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night

“She got sore at me and took it out on Shack who took it out on fatso. Tonight, when he gets home, he beats up on his old lady. She kicks the kid. The kid kicks the dog. The dog kills a cat. End of the line. Aggression always ends up with something dead, Kirboo. Remember that. It’s the only way to end the chain. She put the knife in Shack’s throat, that would have ended it. We’re all animals. Let’s get out of here.”
― John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night