The Doomsters Quotes

“He hadn’t wanted to be helped the way I wanted to help him, the way that helped me.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“She folded her arms across her breasts and looked at me like a lioness.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“She walked as she owned the world, or had owned it once and lost it but remembered how it felt.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“She put her hands over her ears and made a monkey face. Even then, she couldn't look ugly. She had such good bones, her skeleton would have been an ornament in any closet.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“I took the conch shell and set it to my ear. Its susurrus sounded less like the sea than the labored breathing of a tiring runner. No doubt I heard what I was listening for.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“You'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes and sell his body for soap.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“I went through a living room crowded with overstuffed furniture in a green-and-white jungle design from which eyes seemed to watch me, down a short hallway past a pink satin bedroom which reminded me of the inside of a coffin in disarray, to the open door of a bathroom. Tom's jacket lay across the threshold like the headless torso of a man, flattened by the passage of some enormous engine.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“He placed me in a straight chair against the wall, brought me an ashtray, sat at his desk with his back to the window. He was quick in movement, very still in repose. His bald scalp and watchful eyes made him resemble a lizard waiting for a fly to expose itself.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“The second building was enormous. Its central corridor looked long enough to stage a hundred-yard-dash in. I contemplated making one. Ever since the Army, big institutions depressed me: channels, red tape, protocol, buck-passing, hurry up and wait. Only now and then you met a man with enough gumption to keep the big machine from bogging down of its own weight.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“We passed a small-boat harbor, gleaming white on blue, and a long pier draped with fishermen. Everything was as pretty as a postcard. The trouble with you, I said to myself: you're always turning over the postcards and reading the messages on the underside. Written in invisible ink, in blood, in tears, with a black border around them, with postage due, unsigned, or signed with a thumbprint.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“Mrs. Gley came down in a rush. She had on a kind of tea gown whose draperies flew out behind her, like the tail of a blowzy comet.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“He made a production out of answering her, marching around to her side of the car, carrying his belly in front of him like a gift.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“Dr. Brockley.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“Brockley”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“Dr. Brockley”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“She listened with her head bowed, biting one knuckle like a doleful child. But there was nothing childish about the look she gave me. It held a startled awareness, as if she’d had to grow up in a hurry, painfully. I had a feeling that she was the one who had suffered most in the family trouble.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“She spoke with a kind of wilted gallantry. I looked at her. She’d leaned her head against the cracked leather seat, and closed her eyes. Without their light and depth in her face, she looked about thirteen. I caught myself up short, recognizing a feeling I’d had before. It started out as paternal sympathy but rapidly degenerated, if I let it. And Mildred had a husband.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“She was young and small, with a fine small head, its modeling emphasized by a short boyish haircut. She had on a dark business suit which her body filled the way grapes fill their skins.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters

“His eyes held the confident vacancy that comes from the exercise of other people’s power.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters