A Purple Place for Dying Quotes

“It would be one kind of penance. And there are never enough kinds. Not for him. Not for me. And certainly not for you, my friend.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place for Dying

“My friend Meyer, the economist, says that cretins are the only humans who can be absolutely certain of their own sanity. All the rest of us go rocketing along rickety rails over spavined bridges and along the edge of bottomless gorges. The man who believes himself free of any taint of madness is a damned liar.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place for Dying

“I went into the lunchroom. A stocky young girl in a soiled green jumper sat at a table reading a fan magazine. She got up slowly when the screen door creaked. She had enormous breasts and she looked like Buddy Hackett.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place for Dying

“I couldn’t find a lawyer in Esmerelda who wanted to touch it. I found a young lawyer in Belasco, over in the next county. He poked around for a month. I can’t remember all he said, but I think I can remember the important parts. My husband had to give an account of his … his stewardship to the probate judge, and file reports with the court, because I was a minor, I guess. He made three reports, five years after daddy died, and ten years after, and fifteen years after. The last was a final report, five years ago, claiming the estate was exhausted. The judge is dead. Four years ago they built the new courthouse. The records are in the dead files and they aren’t even indexed, and there’s no way of telling if the records are there or not.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place for Dying

“Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place for Dying

“answer. It sounded too damned close.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place for Dying