The Moving Target Quotes

“No one looks at the mountains. But they were there, making them all look silly.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman’s place is in the home, too?”
“Not my home.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I opened the door of her car and helped her in. Her breast leaned against my shoulder heavily. I moved back. I preferred a less complicated kind of pillow, stuffed with feathers, not memories and frustrations.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I used to think the world was divided into good people and bad people, that you could pin responsibility for evil on certain definite people and punish the guilty. I’m still going through the motions.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I like a little danger. Tame danger, controlled by me. It gives me a sense of power, I guess, to take my life in my hands and know damn well I’m not going to lose it.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“The smile that folded the puffed eyelids and creased the sagging cheeks was fixed and forced. I’d seen such smiles in mortuaries on the false face of death. It reminded me that I was going to grow old and die.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I like the sun."
"Do you really? I didn't think you'd go in for simple things like sun. You're the neon type, aren't you?"
"If you say so.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“The dream was intact. He’d worked too hard to have any time for women. Deputy D. A., City Attorney, D. A. He prepared his cases as if he was laying the foundations of society. I knew, because I’d helped him. His courtroom work had been cited by a state-supreme-court judge as a model of forensic jurisprudence. And now at forty Graves had decided to beat his head against a wall.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Can you set her down at Burbank? I want to ask some questions.” “I’m going to.” The summer heat of the valley came up to meet us as we circled in. Heat lay like a fine ash on the rubbish lots and fields and half-built suburbs, slowing the tiny cars on the roads and boulevards, clogging the air.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Why not?” I said. “The night is young.” I was lying. The night was old and chilly, with a slow heartbeat. The tires whined like starved cats on the fog-sprinkled black-top. The neons along the Strip glared with insomnia.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Perhaps you’d like a drink.” “Not before lunch. I’m the new-type detective.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Three sappings in two days are making Jack a dull boy.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“The money wasn’t the main thing. I couldn’t stand podex osculation. And I didn’t”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Now it was just as if he had never been born.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I undressed and got into bed without looking at the empty twin bed on the other side of the room. In a way it was a relief not to have to explain to anyone what I had been doing all day.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Not before lunch. I’m the new-type detective.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“The light-blue haze in the lower canyon was like a thin smoke from slowly burning money. Even the sea looked precious through it, a solid wedge held in the canyon’s mouth, bright blue and polished like a stone. Private property: color guaranteed fast; will not shrink egos. I had never seen the Pacific look so small.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Above the massive bed there was a painting of a clock, a map, and a woman’s hat arranged on a dressing-table. Time, space, and sex. It looked like a Kuniyoshi.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“Do you know what I wish at this moment?” she said. “I wish I had no money and no sex. They’re both more trouble than they’re worth to me.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“opened the front door with my left hand, my gun cocked in my right. A little man leaned toward me, peering into the fog with intent dead eyes. I caught him before he fell out. I’d been feeling death in my bones for twenty-four hours.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“The tires whined like starved cats on the fog-sprinkled black-top.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“He looked at her with contempt, the contempt that silver might feel for sodden flesh. “She never could hold her liquor.” “We were pub-crawling,” I said. “We had a wizard do.” He looked at me sharply. “Evidently. Now why should you be interested in a bag of worms like this?” “You’re talking about the woman I love.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“chapter 5   I pressed the bell, and in a minute a rich female voice gurgled in the speaking-tube. “Who is it, please?” “Lew Archer. Is Morris home?”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“A door sprang open as if it knew Spanish,”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“The electric clock in the kitchen said twenty after four. I found a box of frozen oysters in the freezing compartment of the refrigerator and made an oyster stew. My wife had never liked oysters. Now I could sit at my kitchen table at any hour of the day or night and eat oysters to my heart’s content, building up my virility.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I went to the bar against the third wall and ordered a beer. “Bass ale, Black Horse, Carta Blanca, or Guinness stout? We don’t serve domestic beer after six o’clock.” I”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“I went upstairs to the cocktail bar, where Miranda and Taggert were sitting like strangers thrown together by accident.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target

“You’re taking this pretty seriously,” I said. “Why don’t you go one step further and take it to the police?” “Trying to talk yourself out of a job?” “Yes.”
― Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target