Home > Work > Nightmare in Pink (Travis McGee, #2)
1 " New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We’re nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won’t snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others "
― John D. MacDonald , Nightmare in Pink (Travis McGee, #2)
2 " throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down. "
3 " Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.” These "
4 " If there’s no pain and no loss, it’s only recreational and we can leave it to the minks. People have to be valued. "
5 " The three unholy McGees—the one I try not to be, and the one I wish I was, and the one I really am. "
6 " Disposable cubicles for dispensable people. "
7 " You design the vulgar pots and sell them to the vulgar people. When you start believing them, you become fraudulent, Miss Nina. You make a plausible adjustment to the facts of life. I don’t. And that isn’t a virtue on my part. It’s the disease of permanent adolescence. Honey, when you take your tongue out of your cheek, you become suspect. "
8 " Don’t get intrigued. It’s not worth it. I’m a high level beach-bum. And I’m about as permanent as a black eye. "
