John Macdonald Quotes & Sayings

Sly and reckless, compulsive and bold. The goat-god, with hoof and smile and hairy ears, satyr at the helm of the Play Pen. Love him, understand him, forgive him, lead him shyly to Freud, or Jesus. Or else take the contemporarily untenable position that evil, undiluted by any hint of childhood trauma, does exist in the world, exists for its own precise sake, the pustular bequest from the beast, as inexplicable as Belsen. — John D. MacDonald

I had to make a guess about what would be right and what would be wrong for her. I had to take a risk. I based the risk on what I know of loneliness, of the need of closeness in loneliness. I stroked her, totally impersonal, the way you soothe a terrified animal. At first she would leap and buck at the slightest touch. After a while there was only a tremor when I touched her, and finally that too was gone. She hiccuped and at last fell down into sleep, curled and spent. — John D. MacDonald

The dividing line [between friends and acquaintances] is communication, I think. A friend is someone to whom you can say any jackass thing that enters your mind. With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. Many marriages are between acquaintances. You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend. Another will remain an acquaintance for thirty years. — John D. MacDonald

He was back at me like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from one of the smashed chairs. I caught the first one on the shoulder and I cleverly caught the next one right over the left ear. It broke a big white bell in my head, and he side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let me go down. I landed on my side, and he punted me in the belly like Groza trying for one from the mid-field stripe. — John D. MacDonald

That is the flaw in my personality. Vanity. And your flaw is sentimentality. They are the flaws which will inevitably kill us both. — John D. MacDonald

Never leave anything which can be traced, when you do have a choice. — John D. MacDonald

It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants. — John D. MacDonald

Victims, he thought, were birds and animals and people who arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time, usually in too big a hurry. — John D. MacDonald

sighed. "Bring her around sometime." She padded lithely over to me and took my wrist and looked at my watch. Her breathing had slowed. Her leotard was sweat-dark and fitted her almost as closely as her healthy hide. She beamed down at me. "I knew you'd be nice about it, Trav. She'll be here in twenty minutes." I stared up at her. "You are a con artist, McCall. — John D. MacDonald

Keep your head down, fella. Do your job. Sell the product, write the contracts, negotiate the loans, attend the closings, bank your share and fatten the Keogh accordingly. — John D. MacDonald

Suddenly she came racing into the lounge. She wore one of my big blue towels in sarong fashion, and had a white towel wrapped around her head. Her face looked narrow and intent. Her features looked more pointed. "That last trip," she said. "I don't know if it will help. We stopped at some sort of a boat yard in Miami. I can't even remember the name. Something about a new generator. He kept complaining about the noise the generator made. They took up the hatches and got down in the bilge and did a lot of measuring. The man said it would take a long time to get the one Junior Allen wanted. It made him angry. But he ordered it anyway. He left a down payment on it. He ordered some kind of new model that had just been introduced. — John D. MacDonald

Nothing goes on forever. And if you stay patient, problems tend to go away in time. — John D. MacDonald

Ask for two, and they give you the third free. — John D. MacDonald

The sun was visible from Florida, but it hadn't gotten to me. — John D. MacDonald

"I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything. — Barbara O'Neal

Are you a good human being, Gerry? I mean good in the sense that if you put everything in the scales, they'd tip that way?" It startled her. "I don't know. I haven't thought of myself that way. I think I like the lush life a little too much. That's why I married George. I'm vain. I like men to admire me. I've got a coarse streak that comes out at the wrong times. But I do try to live up to ... some kind of a better image of myself. And I try to improve. I came from nothing, Trav, from a little raggedy-ass spread in the Panhandle with too many kids and too few rooms. — John D. MacDonald

Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him 'waterfront' lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness. — John D. MacDonald

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet. — John D. MacDonald

John 8:44 says Satan is a liar and the father of lies. He captures and conquers men's lives through his convincing lies, often nullifying good intentions with wrongful actions that seemed manly in the moment but in the end lacked the balancing power of clarity. — James MacDonald

Who are you? What do you want? Who are you? Her voice was light and fast and intense and her mouth trembled. She seemed to be on the narrow edge of emotional disaster, holding herself in check with the greatest effort. And about her was a rich and heavy scent of brandy, and an unsteadiness, the eyes too swift and not exactly in focus. — John D. MacDonald

It is one thing to look at a mistreated boat and another to look at a tomb. The silence of the bay seemed more intense. And I could see the glint of the carrion flies. — John D. MacDonald

I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over. — Stephen King

Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable. — John D. MacDonald

The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm. — John D. MacDonald

Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible. — John D. MacDonald

She looked at me with gentle indignation. She was what we have after sixty million years of the Cenozoic. There were a lot of random starts and dead ends. Those big plated pea-brain lizards didn't make it. Sharks, scorpions and cockroaches, as living fossils, are lasting pretty well. Savagery, venom and guile are good survival quotients. This forked female mammal didn't seem to have enough tools. One night in the swamps would kill her. Yet behind all that fragility was a marvelous toughness. A Junior Allen was less evolved. He was a skull-cracker, two steps away from the cave. They were at the two ends of our bell curve, with all the rest of us lumped in the middle. If the trend is still supposed to be up, she was of the kind we should breed, accepting sensitivity as a strength rather than a weakness. But there is too much Junior Allen seed around. — John D. MacDonald

In the sense of movement a boat is a living thing.
It is a companion in the night. Each boat has its own manner and character.
Travis McGee, 1985 — John D. MacDonald

She was a tall and slender woman, possibly in her early thirties. Her skin had the extraordinary fineness of grain, and the translucence you see in small children and fashion models. In her fine long hands, delicacy of wrists, floating texture of dark hair, and in the mobility of the long narrow sensitive structuring of her face there was the look of something almost too well made, too highly bred, too finely drawn for all the natural crudities of human existence. Her eyes were large and very dark and tilted and set widely. She wore dark Bermuda shorts and sandals and a crisp blue and white blouse, no jewelry of any kind, a sparing touch of lipstick. — John D. MacDonald

Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives? — John D. MacDonald

He tottered in. In a few moments he came out, hair piece in place. But the haggardness of his face made it look more spurious than before. — John D. MacDonald

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

Sister, I do what I do, and I do it better than most, and I take some satisfaction in that. I am like a very dependable dog. They throw a stick into a jungle and I can go in there and bring it back. — John D. MacDonald

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

Would you rather I found you a place of your own right away?" "It doesn't matter." "Which would you rather do?" The effort of decision brought her out of her torpor. She made fists and her lips tightened. "I guess I have to be with you. — John D. MacDonald

At last there came the reward for patience, her tremendous inhalation broken into six separate fragments, her whole body listening to itself then, finding, being certain, and then taking with hunger. Later she lay curled languid against my chest, her heart and breathing slow. "Wasn't too soon," she said, a blurred drone. "No, it wasn't." "Sweet," she said. "Ver' sweet." And she nestled down into the sleep of total exhaustion. — John D. MacDonald

I do not function too well on emotional motivations. I am wary of them. And I am wary of a lot of other things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, check lists, time payments, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress, and manifest destiny. — John D. MacDonald

I could have listed maybe fifty possible reactions without coming close to the one I got. Her eyes dulled and her narrow nostrils flared wide and her mouth fell into sickness. She lost her posture and stood in an ugly way. — John D. MacDonald

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset. — John D. MacDonald

if you are too unusual, you may turn into a collector's item. — John D. MacDonald

The wide world is full of likable people who get kicked in the stomach regularly. — John D. MacDonald

In the morning I'm often anti-semantic. — John D. MacDonald

You feel that a door will open and you will be summoned, and horrid things will happen to you before they let you go. You can not mark these houses with any homely flavor of living. When they are emptied after occupancy, they have the look of places where the blood has recently been washed away. — John D. MacDonald

I talked with Junior Allen. He didn't have his mind on it. He was crouched in the brush, and he could taste lamb, and he was alerted for the first shy sound of the little hoofs coming along the trail. I gently and indirectly advanced the idea of my coming along, and he firmly closed the door. He got up and sprang nimbly onto the dock, snapped the weak dock light on, checked his lines, adjusted a fender and came aboard again, restless. — John D. MacDonald

The world is full of damp rocks, with some very strange creatures hiding under them. — John D. MacDonald

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt's, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero's grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast. — John D. MacDonald

cramp began to knot my right calf and so with thumb and forefinger I pinched my nose shut with considerable force and held the pressure until the cramp faded away. A Chinese solution. Acupressure, just as steady pressure at the right point on the inside of the wrist, three finger widths from the heel of the hand, will inhibit nausea. — John D. MacDonald

Vulnerability is the curse of the thinking classes. — John D. MacDonald

If Sir John A. MacDonald or any other leader of that day were here now, he would have a different program from that of sixty years ago. He sought to give his people policies suited to the time in which he lived. — John Bracken

Give me better wood and I will make you a better cabinet. — John A. Macdonald

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

When you look at pictures of people you know are dead, there is something different about the eyes. As if they anticipated their particular fate.It is a visceral recognition. I told myself I was getting too fanciful and went to bed. — John D. MacDonald

Old friend, there are people - young and old - that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by and old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me. — John D. MacDonald

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

All thinking is done with the glands. Logic is added later to tidy things up. — John D. MacDonald

Who the hell are you?" "A friend of a friend." "Like who?" "Marianne, works at Charlie Char-Broil." "That silly bitch hasn't got any friends." Had I done any pleading or begging, she would have slammed the door. So I stood easy, mildly smiling. It's a relaxed area. There is a code for all the transients. If you are presentable, unhurried, vaguely indifferent, it is a challenge. I was having better luck with this than I expected, up to this point. I wanted it to continue. If you push against hostility and suspicion, you merely increase it. In a few moments I saw a little less animosity. — John D. MacDonald

I just don't know. Maybe I'm good, but that goddamn scale would hesitate a long time before tilting that way. — John D. MacDonald

Settled for a blooming redhead from Waco, Takes-us, name of Molly Bea Archer, carefully cut her out of the pack and trundled her, tipsy and willing, back to the Busted Flush. — John D. MacDonald

If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you'd be ecstatic watching changes in publishing. — John D. MacDonald

The rain had washed the sunset time to a lambent beauty. — John D. MacDonald

Anybody may support me when I am right. What I want is someone that will support me when I am wrong. — John A. Macdonald

Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man's reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why? — John D. MacDonald

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

Waves can wash away the most stubborn stains, and the stars do not care one way or the other. — John D. MacDonald

Willy Lazeer is an acquaintance. His teeth and his feet hurt. He hates the climate, the Power Squadron, the government and his wife. The vast load of hate has left him numbed rather than bitter. In appearance, it is as though somebody bleached Sinatra, skinned him, and made Willy wear him. — John D. MacDonald

Anxious little smile that came and went - a mendicant — John D. MacDonald

At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home. — John D. MacDonald

never sit in the first row at the ballet. — John D. MacDonald

What true materialist would settle for a MacDonald's hamburger? — John Gardner

That is, we are responsible only for our actions, not for their results. Trust first in God, then in John Day. — George MacDonald

There are people who try to look as if they are doing a good and thorough job, and then there are the people who actually damn well do it, for its own sake. — John D. MacDonald

She came back pinked, sun-dazed and slow moving, with spume-salted hair and a sandy butt, displaying upon a narrow palm, with a child's innocence, a small and perfect white shell, saying in a voice still drugged with sun and heat, "It's like the first perfect thing I ever saw, or the first shell. It's a little white suit of armor with the animal dead and gone. What does it mean when things look so clear and so meaningful? Silly little things." I sat on a low stool, hating the phone. — John D. MacDonald

He chuckled and pulled himself to his feet. "End of session, McGee. Good night and good luck." At the door he turned and said, "I'll have you checked out, of course. Just for the hell of it. I'm a careful and inquisitive man. — John D. MacDonald

The bathroom was humid with steam and soap. The elderly Palm Beach sybarite who had ordered the pleasure barge for his declining years had added many nice touches. — John D. MacDonald

And you can sit out here in the hour before dawn, boy, and think virtuous thoughts and tell yourself how noble you are and all that shit, and you are going to lay back and hang on to the money, because that is the way the world keeps score. Not your way. Not lately. — John D. MacDonald

Walk very lightly and carefully, Wade. Look behind every bush. — John D. MacDonald

You know what just seeing him did to me." "I know. Lois, he just isn't that ominous. Evil, but not ominous. Sly, but not prescient. Once he is off balance, he will stay off balance, and fall heavily. And the law will gather him in. — John D. MacDonald

But now Cathy had created the restlessness, the indignation, the beginnings of that shameful need to clamber aboard my spavined white steed, knock the rust off the armor, tilt the crooked old lance and shout huzzah. Sleep immediately followed decision. — John D. MacDonald

Her dark eyes were like twin entrances to two deep caves. Nothing lived in those caves. Maybe something had, once upon a time. There were piles of picked bones back in there, some scribbling on the walls, and some grey ash where the fires had been. — John D. MacDonald

Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he'll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he's going to see. — John D. MacDonald

You? Really now, Mr. McGee. You are spectacularly huge, and a tan that deep is almost vulgar, and you have a kind of leathery fading boyish charm, but this is not and never was a game for dilettantes, for jolly boys, for the favor-for-an-old-buddy routine. No gray-eyed wonder with a big white grin can solve anything or retrieve anything by blundering around in my life. Thanks for the gesture. But this isn't television. I don't need a big brother. So why don't you just go on back to your fun and games? — John D. MacDonald

In all emotional conflicts, the thing you find the most difficult to do, is the thing that you should do.
Meyer's Law — John D. MacDonald

I drove back into town, full of the look of her, full of the impact of her. It was an impact that made the day, the trees, the city, all look more vivid. Her face was special and clear in my mind - the wide mouth, the one crooked tooth, the gray slant of her eyes. Her figure was good, shoulders just a bit too wide, hips just a shade too narrow to be classic. Her legs were long, with clean lines. Her flat back and the inswept lines of her waist were lovely. Her breasts were high and wide spaced, with a flavor of impertinence, almost arrogance. It was the coloring of her though that pleased me most. Dark red of the hair, gray of the eyes, golden skin tones. — John D. MacDonald

By five minutes of four I was checked into the hotel. They had a lot of room. They had three conventions going and they still had a lot of room. Once inside the hotel, I was right back in Miami. Same scent to the chilled air, same skeptical servility, same glorious decor - as if a Brazilian architect had mated an air terminal with a manufacturer of cotton padding. Lighting, dramatic. At any moment the star of the show will step back from one of the eight (8) bars and break into song and the girlies will come prancing in. Keep those knees high, kids. Keep laughing. — John D. MacDonald

The breakfast was rather silent, but not with strain. — John D. MacDonald

He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness. — George MacDonald

It's a tricky, complex, indifferent society, Puss. It's a loophole world. And there are a lot of clever animals who know how to reach through the loopholes and pick the pockets of the unsuspecting. — John D. MacDonald

I heard his hasty footsteps on the dock. I kept my head down. I heard the thump and felt it as he leaped down into the cockpit. I heard his grunt of consternation. He would have to find out, and find out quickly. — John D. MacDonald

Politics is a game requiring great coolness. — John A. Macdonald

Molly Bea, she of the hard white breasts lightly dusted with golden freckles, would never be so humiliated by life because she could never become as deeply involved in the meaty toughness of life. She would never be victimized by her own illusions because they were not essential to her. She could always find new ones when the old ones wore out. But Cathy was stuck with hers. The illusion of love, magically changed to a memory of shame. — John D. MacDonald

If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck. — John D. MacDonald

A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else. — John D. MacDonald

My ward had arisen. She had slept so hard her eyes looked puffy, but she had acquainted herself with the equipment in my stainless steel galley, and she wore a pretty cotton dress, which hung just a little loosely on her, and she had taken two generous steaks out of the locker and set them out to thaw. She seemed a little more aware of the situation, shyly aware that she might be a nuisance. — John D. MacDonald

When a man has done me an evil turn once, I don't like to give him the opportunity to do so twice. — John A. Macdonald

Let us be French, let us be English, but most importantly let us be Canadian! — John A. Macdonald

By noon, in a gray February world, we had come down through snow flurries to land at Albany, and had taken off again. When the snow ended the sky was a luminous gray. I looked down at the winter calligraphy of upstate New York, white fields marked off by the black woodlots, an etching without color, superbly restful in contrast to the smoky, guttering, grinding stink of the airplane clattering across the sky like an old commuter bus. — John D. MacDonald

Such gratitude! It hurt me to see you lose your professional standing, McGee. Like you were going soft and sentimental. So, through my own account, I put us into Fletcher and rode it up nicely and took us out, and split the bonus right down the middle. It's short-term. It's a check. Pay your taxes. Live a little. It's a longer retirement this time. We can gather up a throng and go blundering around on this licentious craft and get the remorses for saying foolish things while in our cups. We had a salvage contract, idiot, and the fee is comparatively small but fair."
"And you are comparatively large but fair."
"I think of myself that way. Where did the check go? Into the pocket so fast? Good." he looked at his watch. "I am taking a lady to lunch. Make a nice neat deck there, Captain." And away he went, humming. — John D. MacDonald

[To] me organized religion, the formalities and routines, [is] like being marched in formation to look at a sunset. — John D. MacDonald

This was not some pretty little girl, coyly flirtatious, delicately stimulated. This was the mature female of the species, vivid, handsome and strong demanding that all the life within her be matched. Her instinct would detect any hedging, any dishonesty, any less than complete response to her - and then she would be gone for good. — John D. MacDonald

[Los Angeles] the world's biggest third-class city ... — John D. MacDonald

If you look over in that direction, like two hundred yards, you will see some birds walking. Never drive the boat toward where the birds are walking. First rule of navigation. — John D. MacDonald