Top 120 John D. MacDonald Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “He chuckled and pulled himself to his feet. “End of session, McGee. Good night and good luck.” At the door he turned and said, “I’ll have you checked out, of course. Just for the hell of it. I’m a careful and inquisitive man.”

— John D. MacDonald

102. “O thank you, Uncle Omar. Thank you for instilling a helpless youth with such grave suspicions of women and all their works, that here and now, in my maturity, in my thirty-second year, I cannot confront a lovely and half-naked lady without getting cramps in my toes and saying gahr.”

— John D. MacDonald

103. “In the morning I’m often anti-semantic.”

— John D. MacDonald

104. “In every contact with every other human in every day of your life, you become what you sense they want of you or, if you are motivated the other way, exactly what they do not want.”

— John D. MacDonald

105. “Would you rather I found you a place of your own right away?” “It doesn’t matter.” “Which would you rather do?” The effort of decision brought her out of her torpor. She made fists and her lips tightened. “I guess I have to be with you.”

— John D. MacDonald

106. “People have their acquired armor, made up of gestures and expressions and defensive chatter.”

— John D. MacDonald

107. “I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension. Astrology, health food, flag waving, bible thumping, Zen, nudism, nihilism – all of these are grotesque simplifications which small dreary people adopt in the hope of thereby finding The Answer, because the very concept that maybe there is no answer, never has been, never will be, terrifies them.”

— John D. MacDonald

108. “That is the flaw in my personality. Vanity. And your flaw is sentimentality. They are the flaws which will inevitably kill us both.”

— John D. MacDonald

109. “He was back at me like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from one of the smashed chairs. I caught the first one on the shoulder and I cleverly caught the next one right over the left ear. It broke a big white bell in my head, and he side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let me go down. I landed on my side, and he punted me in the belly like Groza trying for one from the mid-field stripe.”

— John D. MacDonald

110. “Victims, he thought, were birds and animals and people who arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time, usually in too big a hurry.”

— John D. MacDonald

111. “If you look over in that direction, like two hundred yards, you will see some birds walking. Never drive the boat toward where the birds are walking. First rule of navigation.”

— John D. MacDonald

112. “I have no stomach for surprises. I have endured too many of them. They upset me. The elimination of all removable risk is the most plausible way of staying alive.”

— John D. MacDonald

113. “The ones that swear off, most of them they go back onto it sooner or later, get pig drunk and locked up.” “Something special you’ve got against drunks, Sheriff?” “Married to one for a long time. Too long. She finally drove into a tree one night.”

— John D. MacDonald

114. “Once in a while they show up to ask some more questions, but you are amiable, slightly stupid, and very polite.”

— John D. MacDonald

115. “I went back to Lois. She had a glass of bourbon that looked like a glass of iced coffee. Her smile was loose and wet and her eyes didn’t track.”

— John D. MacDonald

116. “Travis McGee, that big brown loose-jointed boat bum, that pale-eyed, wire-haired girl-seeker, that slayer of small savage fish, that beach-walker, gin-drinker, quip-maker, peace-seeker, iconoclast, disbeliever, argufier, that knuckly, scar-tissued reject from a structured society.”

— John D. MacDonald

117. “The fact remains, we got the evidence right in front of us, the decay of the nashal moral fiber, mob rule in the streets, violence, punks killing decen’ people. Am I right or am I right?”

— John D. MacDonald

118. “The bathroom was humid with steam and soap. The elderly Palm Beach sybarite who had ordered the pleasure barge for his declining years had added many nice touches.”

— John D. MacDonald

119. “All the bright people, stopped in the midst of life, looking with forced smile into the lenses, then to be filed away, their colors fading as the years pass, caught there in slide trays, stack loads, view cubes, until one day the camera person dies and the grandchild says, “Mom, I don’t know any of these people. Or where these were taken even. There are jillions of them here in this big box and more in the closet. What will I do with them anyway?” “Throw them out, dear.”

— John D. MacDonald

120. “I don’t often do this much talking for so little reason, McGee. You have a nice touch. You’re an eager listener. You smile in the right places. It puts people on. And, of course, you haven’t leveled with me.”

— John D. MacDonald

121. “I heard his hasty footsteps on the dock. I kept my head down. I heard the thump and felt it as he leaped down into the cockpit. I heard his grunt of consternation. He would have to find out, and find out quickly.”

— John D. MacDonald

122. “Cathy introduced us. Christine stood there inside her smooth skin, warm and indolent, mildly speculative.”

— John D. MacDonald

123. “He stared at me. “Strange you should do all this for her.” “Pity, I guess.” “One of the worst traps of all, McGee.”

— John D. MacDonald

124. “In explosive gasps Chook introduced us and we went inside. I could see that she was elderly by Chook’s standards. Perhaps twenty-six or -seven. A brown-eyed blonde, with the helpless mournful eyes of a basset hound. She was a little weathered around the eyes. In the lounge lights I saw that the basic black had given her a lot of good use. Her hands looked a little rough. Under the slightly bouffant skirt of the black dress were those unmistakable dancer’s legs, curved and trim and sinewy.”

— John D. MacDonald

125. “I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture.”

— John D. MacDonald

126. “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. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.”

— John D. MacDonald

127. “The biggest and most important reason in the world is to be together with someone in a way that makes life a little less bleak and solitary and lonesome. To exchange the I for We. In the biggest sense of the word, it’s cold outside. And kindness and affection and gentleness build a nice warm fire inside.”

— John D. MacDonald

128. “I don’t like it anymore around here, Meyer. I want to go home. Every time I get blown up by a bomb I get that same feeling. I want to go home.”

— John D. MacDonald

129. “The nonreader in our culture wants to believe. He is the “one born every minute”. The world is so vastly confusing and baffling to him that he feels there has to be some simple answer to everything that troubles him.”

— John D. MacDonald

130. “Ninety-nine percent of the things that ninety-nine percent of the people do are entirely predictable, when you have a few lead facts. Drunks, maniacs and pregnant women are the customary exceptions. Everyone has the suspicion he is utterly unique. But we are a herd animal, and we all turn to face into the wind.”

— John D. MacDonald

131. “There are too many of them in the world lately, the hopeful ladies who married grown-up boy children and soon lost all hope... They are not ardent libbers, yet at the same time they are not looking for some man to “take care.” God knows they are experts at taking care of themselves. They just want a grown-up man to share their life with, each of them taking care. But there are one hell of a lot more grown-up ladies than grown-up men.”

— John D. MacDonald

132. “And it was okay because it had to be. There wasn’t any other choice. Sometimes it is a relief not to have a choice. I will have to get Meyer to explain this concept to me.”

— John D. MacDonald