John D. MacDonald Quotes

Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
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
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
When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.
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
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
A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else.
John D. MacDonald
Vulnerability is the curse of the thinking classes.
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
We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.
John D. MacDonald
I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess that we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.
John D. 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
Please not yet. Those are the three eternal words. Please not yet.
John D. MacDonald