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Ross Macdonald Quotes

Ross Macdonald is the main pseudonym that was used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar . He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.

The Lew Archer novels are recognized as some of the most significant American mystery books of the mid-20th century, bringing a literary sophistication to the genre. John Leonard, longtime critic for The New York Times Book Review, declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist".

Brought up in Ontario, Canada, Macdonald eventually settled in California, where he died in 1983.

✵ 13. December 1915 – 11. July 1983  •  Other names راس مک‌دانلد

Works

The Drowning Pool
The Drowning Pool
Ross Macdonald
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty
Ross Macdonald
The Way Some People Die
The Drowning Pool
The Drowning Pool
Ross Macdonald
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty
Ross Macdonald
The Way Some People Die
Ross Macdonald: 14 quotes1 like

Famous Ross Macdonald Quotes

“The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.”

Ross Macdonald

“Nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean wouldn't cure.”

Ross Macdonald book The Drowning Pool

The Moving Target (1949)
Source: The Drowning Pool

“No more guns for you.”

Ross Macdonald

“Every witness has his own way of creeping up on the truth.”

Ross Macdonald book Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty (1973)

Ross Macdonald Quotes about people

“"You have a secret passion for justice. Why don't you admit it?"
"I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people."”

Ross Macdonald

The Goodbye Look (1969)

“When your income passes a certain point you lose touch. All of a sudden the other people look like geeks or gooks, expendables.”

Ross Macdonald

The Goodbye Look (1969)

“The moral beatings that people took from their children, I was thinking, were the hardest to endure and the hardest to escape.”

Ross Macdonald

The Goodbye Look (1969)

Ross Macdonald Quotes

“They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through mountains, cut down a thousand year 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.”

Ross Macdonald book The Drowning Pool

The Drowning Pool (1952)

“An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.”

Ross Macdonald book The Way Some People Die

The Way Some People Die (1951)

“I knew how it was with drunks. They ran out of generosity, even for themselves.”

Ross Macdonald book Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty (1973)

“Money costs too much.”

Ross Macdonald

The Goodbye Look (1969)

“Deep feeling sounded in her voice. I had no doubt that the feeling was partly sincere. Still, there was something unreal about it. I suspected that she'd been playing tricks with her emotions for a long time, until none of them was quite valid.”

Ross Macdonald book The Galton Case

The Galton Case (1959)

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