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61 " Behind the semi-elliptical bar four cowboys who had never been near a cow sang western songs which sounded as if they had originated in the far east. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Underground Man (Lew Archer #16)
62 " Tourists and transients lived in hotels and motels along the waterfront. Behind them a belt of slums lay ten blocks deep, where the darker half of the population lived and died. On the other side of the tracks - the tracks were there - the business section wore its old Spanish facades like icing on a stale cake. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Way Some People Die (Lew Archer #3)
63 " A moon like a fallen fruit reversing gravity was hoisting itself above the rooftops. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Chill
64 " Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. I learned that at my mother’s knee and other low joints, "
65 " I like the sun.""Do you really? I didn't think you'd go in for simple things like sun. You're the neon type, aren't you?""If you say so. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Moving Target (Lew Archer #1)
66 " A few languid clouds moved inland over our heads. A little high plane was gamboling among them like a terrier in a henyard. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator, Including Newly Discovered Case Notes
67 " Neighborhood grocery stores, coal yards, gas stations, cheap taverns, big old rundown houses, a few churches with blank embarrassed faces. "
― Ross Macdonald
68 " I found when I followed the driveway around to the back that behind its imposing front it was just another tract house, as if the architect had tried to combine a southern plantation mansion with the slave quarters. "
69 " She touched his shoulder, very lightly, like a child fingering a forbidden object. "
70 " A taste of whiskey had changed her mood, as a touch of acid will change the color of blue litmus paper. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Barbarous Coast (Lew Archer #6)
71 " I took the conch shell and set it to my ear. Its susurrus sounded less like the sea than the labored breathing of a tiring runner. No doubt I heard what I was listening for. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Doomsters
72 " Don't be silly," he said uncertainly. "Now, what's your problem? If you think you're broke, I'm broker, ask my broker. "
73 " Trying to get information out of a Los Angeles lawyer was like opening a can of sardines without a key. "
74 " I wondered if we were doing him a favor. The Galton household had hot and cold running money piped in from an inexhaustible reservoir. But money was never free. Like any other commodity, it had to be paid for. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Galton Case (Lew Archer #8)
75 " There was some kind of passion between them. It gave off a faint wrong smoky odor, like something burning where it shouldn’t be, arson committed by children playing with matches. I "
― Ross Macdonald , The Instant Enemy (Lew Archer #14)
76 " I went through a living room crowded with overstuffed furniture in a green-and-white jungle design from which eyes seemed to watch me, down a short hallway past a pink satin bedroom which reminded me of the inside of a coffin in disarray, to the open door of a bathroom. Tom's jacket lay across the threshold like the headless torso of a man, flattened by the passage of some enormous engine. "
77 " She put her hands over her ears and made a monkey face. Even then, she couldn't look ugly. She had such good bones, her skeleton would have been an ornament in any closet. "
78 " He made a production out of answering her, marching around to her side of the car, carrying his belly in front of him like a gift. "
79 " Mrs. Gley came down in a rush. She had on a kind of tea gown whose draperies flew out behind her, like the tail of a blowzy comet. "
80 " We had reached the foot of Sable's hill. Howell wrestled his car up the climbing curves. The tires shuddered and screeched like lost souls under punishment. "