John D. MacDonald Short Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

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A man with a credit card is in hock to his own image of himself.

John D. MacDonald
The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.

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

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

John D. MacDonald
We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.

John D. MacDonald
Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything that should have been obvious at the time.

John D. MacDonald
When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.

John D. MacDonald
I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.

John D. MacDonald
The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

John D. MacDonald
People spend so much time fretting about what they did yesterday and dreading what might happen tomorrow, they miss out on all their todays.

John D. MacDonald
Night and gin and music-the right setting for peeling off the thin clinging layers of bullshit and finding one's way down closer to the essential self.

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
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
I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.

John D. MacDonald
... it isn't foolish or wicked to enjoy. Wickedness is hurting people on purpose. I love what you are and who you are and how you are. You give me great joy. And you make horrible coffee.

John D. MacDonald