The Empty Copper Sea Quotes

“All the bright people, stopped in the midst of life, looking with forced smile into the lenses, then to be filed away, their colors fading as the years pass, caught there in slide trays, stack loads, view cubes, until one day the camera person dies and the grandchild says, “Mom, I don’t know any of these people. Or where these were taken even. There are jillions of them here in this big box and more in the closet. What will I do with them anyway?” “Throw them out, dear.”
― John D. MacDonald, The Empty Copper Sea

“The ones that swear off, most of them they go back onto it sooner or later, get pig drunk and locked up.” “Something special you’ve got against drunks, Sheriff?” “Married to one for a long time. Too long. She finally drove into a tree one night.”
― John D. MacDonald, The Empty Copper Sea

“But when they don’t wear helmets, they abuse the taxpayers, taking a couple of weeks to die in intensive care, their primitive brains jellied by hard impact with the concrete highway. Somebody has to pick them up when they go down and deliver them to Emergency, regrettably.”
― John D. MacDonald, The Empty Copper Sea

“Listen to me, please. I have to be my own person. I have to take complete charge of my life. I did the hard-scrabble years for somebody else, for some idea that was never going to work anyway. I’m not talking about lib or chauvinism. I’ve got kind of an alarming capacity for blind loyalty. Like my brother had. Fierce loyalty. I know that in some very final way, dear, we are all absolutely alone. The relationships people have are an attempt to deny that aloneness, but it doesn’t go away. I want my loyalty to be to me for a while, and maybe for all the years I might have left. I have to be complete within myself and stand by myself in order to really become a person.”
― John D. MacDonald, The Empty Copper Sea

“answer?” I shrugged. “Answer shmanser. In the immortal words of Popeye, I yam what I yam. I know my patterns and limitations, needs and hang-ups. So I go on. Right? I endure. I enjoy what I can. There aren’t any more forks in the road to take. Keep walking.”
― John D. MacDonald, The Empty Copper Sea