“ The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present. Ross Macdonald
“ The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. Ross Macdonald
“ On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession. Ross Macdonald
“ There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure. Ross Macdonald
“ Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls… Ross Macdonald
“ If California is a state of mind, Hollywood is where you take its temperature. There is a peculiar sense in which this city existing mainly on film and tape is our national capital, alas, and not just… Ross Macdonald
“ In wine was truth, perhaps, but in whisky, the way Hoffman sluiced it down, was an army of imaginary rats climbing your legs. Ross Macdonald
“ The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution. Ross Macdonald
“ The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up… Ross Macdonald
“ I like a little danger. Tame danger, controlled by me. It gives me a sense of power, I guess, to take my life in my hands and know damn well I’m not going to lose it. Ross Macdonald
“ 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… Ross Macdonald
“ The apparent facts, if you like. I'm not a philosopher. We lawyers don't deal in ultimate realities. Who knows what they are? We deal in appearances. Ross Macdonald
“ Some men spend their lives looking for ways to punish themselves for having been born. Ross Macdonald
“ 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 b… Ross Macdonald
