Home > Author > Ross Macdonald
101 " His eyes held the confident vacancy that comes from the exercise of other people’s power. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Doomsters
102 " He was recovering his style, or whatever it was that kept him upright and made him interesting to women. On the shooting level he was a bum, as useless as a cat in a dogfight. But he had his own feline dignity, even with his hands up. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Way Some People Die (Lew Archer #3)
103 " 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. "
104 " Somewhere out of sight a punching-bag was rat-tat-tatting on a board. I stepped through a doorless aperture opposite the door I'd come in by, and found myself in the main hall. It was comparatively small, with seats for maybe a thousand rising on four sides to the girders that held up the roof. An ingot of lead-gray light from a skylight fell through the moted air onto the empty roped square on the central platform. Still no people, but you could tell that people had been there. The same air had hung for months in the windowless building, absorbing the smells of human sweat and breath, roasted peanuts and beer, white and brown cigarettes, Ben Hur perfume and bay rum and hair oil and tired feet. A social researcher with a good nose could have written a Ph.D. thesis about that air. "
― Ross Macdonald
105 " The sun, heavy and red, was almost down on the horizon now. Its image floated like spilled fire on the water. The "
― Ross Macdonald , Black Money (Lew Archer #13)
106 " A young man with an untrimmed beard and rebellious eyes looked like a conscientious objector to everything. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Chill
107 " The sun burned like a fire ship on the water, sinking slowly till only a red smoke was left trailing up the sky. A fishing boat was headed into the harbor, black and small against the enormous west. Above its glittering wake a few gulls whirled like sparks which had gone out. "
108 " Smoke if you like. I’ve given it up. It’s so morale-building to have given up one of the vices. Of course I’d never have done it without that cancer scare to help me. Sheer terror can be awfully useful, don’t you think? "
― Ross Macdonald , The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator, Including Newly Discovered Case Notes
109 " Beyond a row of dwarf palms the sea was snoring and complaining like a drunk in a doorway. "
110 " Crimes often come in pairs. "
111 " I'm a sharpshooter. I still don't like to kill a man. It's too damn easy to wipe one out and too damn hard to grow one. "
112 " You are joking. You must want money. You work for money, don't you?""I want it very badly," I said. "But I can't take this money. It wouldn't belong to me, I would belong to it. It would expect me to do things, and I would have to do them. Sit on the lid of this mess of yours, the way Marfeld did, until dry rot sets in. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Barbarous Coast (Lew Archer #6)
113 " I went upstairs to the cocktail bar, where Miranda and Taggert were sitting like strangers thrown together by accident. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Moving Target (Lew Archer #1)
114 " You understand my idea of a happy marriage is essentially anything that works. "
115 " They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn’t touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn’t be tainted. There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure. "
116 " opened the front door with my left hand, my gun cocked in my right. A little man leaned toward me, peering into the fog with intent dead eyes. I caught him before he fell out. I’d been feeling death in my bones for twenty-four hours. "
117 " He was silent for a minute. His gaze moved past me and grew distant as if he was watching his daughter slip away over a receding horizon. I had no children, but I had given up envying people who had. "
― Ross Macdonald , The Underground Man (Lew Archer #16)
118 " She was young and small, with a fine small head, its modeling emphasized by a short boyish haircut. She had on a dark business suit which her body filled the way grapes fill their skins. "
119 " She spoke with a kind of wilted gallantry. I looked at her. She’d leaned her head against the cracked leather seat, and closed her eyes. Without their light and depth in her face, she looked about thirteen. I caught myself up short, recognizing a feeling I’d had before. It started out as paternal sympathy but rapidly degenerated, if I let it. And Mildred had a husband. "
120 " Can you set her down at Burbank? I want to ask some questions.” “I’m going to.” The summer heat of the valley came up to meet us as we circled in. Heat lay like a fine ash on the rubbish lots and fields and half-built suburbs, slowing the tiny cars on the roads and boulevards, clogging the air. "