Top 120 John D. MacDonald Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck.”

— John D. MacDonald

2. “Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.”

— John D. MacDonald

3. “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won’t cheat, then you know he never will.”

— John D. MacDonald

4. “I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.”

— John D. MacDonald

5. “We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.”

— John D. MacDonald

6. “The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.”

— John D. MacDonald

7. “My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.”

— John D. MacDonald

8. “People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness.”

— John D. MacDonald

9. “Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he’ll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he’s going to see.”

— John D. MacDonald

10. “You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.”

— John D. MacDonald

11. “The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.”

— John D. MacDonald

12. “Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility.”

— John D. MacDonald

13. “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

14. “She was styled for abundant lactation, and her uniform blouse was not.”

— John D. MacDonald

15. “Now each one of us, black or white, is a symbol. The war is out in the open and the skin color is a uniform. All the deep and basic similarities of the human condition are forgotten so that we can exaggerate the few differences that exist.”

— John D. MacDonald

16. “If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you’d be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.”

— John D. MacDonald

17. “Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn’t happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?”

— John D. MacDonald

18. “Never leave anything which can be traced, when you do have a choice.”

— John D. MacDonald

19. “The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm.”

— John D. MacDonald

20. “The rain had washed the sunset time to a lambent beauty.”

— John D. MacDonald

21. “The intelligence of a mob can be determined by dividing the lowest IQ present by the number of people in the mob.”

— John D. MacDonald

22. “To enjoy enduring success we should travel a little in advance of the world.”

— John D. MacDonald

23. “Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.”

— John D. MacDonald

24. “A man with a credit card is in hock to his own image of himself.”

— John D. MacDonald

25. “It was to have been a quiet evening at home. Home is the Busted Flush, 52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale.”

— John D. MacDonald

26. “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

27. “Waves can wash away the most stubborn stains, and the stars do not care one way or the other.”

— John D. MacDonald

28. “Why, my boy, if all over this great country little bands of Communist sympathizers and Communist dupes could put a spoke in the wheels of free enterprise by blocking progress and production, Red Russia could bring this mighty nation to its knees without using one single little bomb. Lenin said that in order to achieve victory over the capitalist nations, it is first necessary to bankrupt them. Leaving that bay untouched is one of the devices of a welfare state. It’s socialistic in nature.”

— John D. MacDonald

29. “All thinking is done with the glands. Logic is added later to tidy things up.”

— John D. MacDonald

30. “Vulnerability is the curse of the thinking classes.”

— John D. MacDonald

31. “Saturday night. Buddy Dow, hired skipper of a big lunker owned by an insurance company in Atlanta, had enlisted two recruits and was despairingly in need of more.”

— John D. MacDonald

32. “For the expendable marriage, you give the expendable gift.”

— John D. MacDonald

33. “Today, my friends, we each have one day less, every one of us. And joy is the only thing that slows the clock.”

— John D. MacDonald

34. “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.”

— John D. MacDonald

35. “The sun was visible from Florida, but it hadn’t gotten to me.”

— John D. MacDonald

36. “It’s no good telling somebody they’re trying too hard. It’s very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.”

— John D. MacDonald

37. “She came back pinked, sun-dazed and slow moving, with spume-salted hair and a sandy butt, displaying upon a narrow palm, with a child’s innocence, a small and perfect white shell, saying in a voice still drugged with sun and heat, “It’s like the first perfect thing I ever saw, or the first shell. It’s a little white suit of armor with the animal dead and gone. What does it mean when things look so clear and so meaningful? Silly little things.” I sat on a low stool, hating the phone.”

— John D. MacDonald

38. “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

39. “Who are you? What do you want? Who are you?” Her voice was light and fast and intense and her mouth trembled. She seemed to be on the narrow edge of emotional disaster, holding herself in check with the greatest effort. And about her was a rich and heavy scent of brandy, and an unsteadiness, the eyes too swift and not exactly in focus.”

— John D. MacDonald

40. “In spite of the air conditioning, she had filled the lounge with a faint sharp-sweet odor of large overheated girl.”

— John D. MacDonald

41. “If there was one sunset every twenty years, how would people react to them? If there were ten seashells in all the world, what would they be worth? If people could make love just once a year, how carefully would they pick their mates?”

— John D. MacDonald

42. “A bird, a horse, a dog, a man, a girl, or a cat – you knock them about and diminish yourself because all you do is prove yourself equally vulnerable.”

— John D. MacDonald

43. “All the little gods of irony must whoop and weep and roll on the floors of Olympus when they tune in on the night thoughts of a truly fatuous male.”

— John D. MacDonald

44. “Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave.”

— John D. MacDonald

45. “It was to have been a quiet evening at home.”

— John D. MacDonald

46. “Molly Bea, she of the hard white breasts lightly dusted with golden freckles, would never be so humiliated by life because she could never become as deeply involved in the meaty toughness of life. She would never be victimized by her own illusions because they were not essential to her. She could always find new ones when the old ones wore out. But Cathy was stuck with hers. The illusion of love, magically changed to a memory of shame.”

— John D. MacDonald

47. “I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don’t buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.”

— John D. MacDonald

48. “A nonreader is somebody standing there in a blindfold.”

— John D. MacDonald

49. “Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.”

— John D. MacDonald

50. “I think he’ll wait until he gets the new generator installed.” “But what if he leaves with them in the morning?” “If that seems too dreadful to you, Lois, you can always get drunk.” “You don’t have to be so cruel.” “You disappointed me.” “I know. I’m sorry.” “How’s your head now?” “A little better, I think. Trav?” “Yes, honey.” “Trav, I’m so hungry I could eat this bench.”

— John D. MacDonald