Ross Macdonald Quotes

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.

It was some time since I had gone to sleep in the same room with a girl. Of course, the room was large and reasonably well-lighted, and the girl had other things than me on her mind.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

She didn't look like any motel manager I had ever seen. More likely an actress who hadn't quite made the grade down south, or a very successful amateur tart on the verge of turning pro. Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour.

Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it ourselves.