Nightmare in Pink Quotes

“New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We’re nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won’t snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.” These”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“If there’s no pain and no loss, it’s only recreational and we can leave it to the minks. People have to be valued.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“Don’t,” she whispered. “I want you to be glad about me.” “I am. I don’t go hunting for regret. Maybe when joy is a little conditional, it’s sharper.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“I read a great deal. It’s the only way we have to lead more lives than one.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“This is the most desperate breed there is. They are just a little too bright for the servile role of dogdom. So their loneliness is a little more excruciating, their welcomes more frantic, their desire to please a little more intense. They seem to think that if they could just do everything right, they wouldn’t have to be locked up in the silence—pacing, sleeping, brooding, enduring the swollen bladder. That’s what they try to talk about. One day there will appear a super-poodle, one almost as bright as the most stupid alley cat, and he will figure it out. He will suddenly realize that his loneliness is merely a by-product of his being used to ease the loneliness of his Owner. He’ll tell the others. He’ll leave messages. And some dark night they’ll all start chewing throats.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“You know I always felt it would be cheap and nasty and degrading to just … make love with a man without it being all set up to be forever. I mean a woman makes deals, doesn’t she? We want security, so we trade the body for the deal, and the pleasure gets thrown in as a bonus.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“I think it is a lot of money. We’re all still carnivorous, and money is the meat. If there’s a lot of money and any possible way to get at it, I think people will do some strange warped things. Hardly anybody is really immune to the hunger, not if there’s enough in view. I know I’m not.” “Is that one of those facts of life”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“There is only one way to make people talk more than they care to. Listen. Listen with hungry earnest attention to every word. In the intensity of your attention, make little nods of agreement, little sounds of approval. You can’t fake it. You have to really listen. In a posture of gratitude. And it is such a rare and startling experience for them, such a boon to ego, such a gratification of self, to find a genuine listener, that they want to prolong the experience. And the only way to do that is to keep talking. A good listener is far more rare than an adequate lover.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“You have to really listen. In a posture of gratitude. And it is such a rare and startling experience for them, such a boon to ego, such a gratification of self, to find a genuine listener, that they want to prolong the experience. And the only way to do that is to keep talking. A good listener is far more rare than an adequate lover.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“was any”
― John D. MacDonald, A Nightmare in Pink

“Don’t get intrigued. It’s not worth it. I’m a high level beach-bum. And I’m about as permanent as a black eye.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“You design the vulgar pots and sell them to the vulgar people. When you start believing them, you become fraudulent, Miss Nina. You make a plausible adjustment to the facts of life. I don’t. And that isn’t a virtue on my part. It’s the disease of permanent adolescence. Honey, when you take your tongue out of your cheek, you become suspect.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“The three unholy McGees—the one I try not to be, and the one I wish I was, and the one I really am.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink

“Disposable cubicles for dispensable people.”
― John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink