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…

— John D. MacDonald

The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.

— John D. MacDonald

All thinking is done with the glands. Logic is added later to tidy things up.

— 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…

— John D. MacDonald

“Walk very lightly and carefully, Wade. Look behind every bush.”

— 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…

— John D. MacDonald

“Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways…

— 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…

— 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…

— John D. MacDonald

Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower…

— 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…

— John D. MacDonald

“The fact remains, we got the evidence right in front of us, the decay of the nashal moral fiber, mob rule in…

— John D. MacDonald

“He’s such a male little male.”

— 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

A nonreader is somebody standing there in a blindfold.

— John D. MacDonald

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.

— 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

Night and gin and music-the right setting for peeling off the thin clinging layers of bullshit and finding one's way down closer…

— John D. MacDonald

“O thank you, Uncle Omar. Thank you for instilling a helpless youth with such grave suspicions of women and all their works,…

— John D. MacDonald

“The intelligence of a mob can be determined by dividing the lowest IQ present by the number of people in the mob.”

— 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…

— John D. MacDonald

“You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend. Another one will remain an acquaintance…

— John D. MacDonald

“I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to…

— John D. MacDonald

“You said if X has something valuable and Y comes along and takes it away from him, and there is absolutely no…

— 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…

— John D. MacDonald