Quotes from The Chill

Ross Macdonald ·  288 pages

Rating: (2.8K votes)


“Some men spend their lives looking for ways to punish themselves for having been born.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“Pour alcohol on a bundle of nerves and it generally turns into a can of worms.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“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, quote from The Chill


“He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill



“A moon like a fallen fruit reversing gravity was hoisting itself above the rooftops.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. I learned that at my mother’s knee and other low joints,”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“his manner had the heavy ease of a politician, poised between bullying and flattery.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“A young man with an untrimmed beard and rebellious eyes looked like a conscientious objector to everything.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill


“I could smell fog even at this level now. It was rolling down from the mountains, flooding out the moon, as well as rising from the sea. The”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill



About the author

Ross Macdonald
Born place: in Los Gatos, California,, The United States
Born date December 13, 1915
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Popular quotes

“Kerran he joutuivat jättämään haavoittuneen, perääntyessään eräältä kukkulalta. Kun he valtasivat mäen takaisin, löysivät he miehen alusvaatteilleen riisuttuna, pistimen reikä kyljessä. Muuan Kariluodon konepistoolimies ampui siitä hyvästä ohimennen, kainalostaan tähdäten, kolme antautunutta. Kaksi päivää myöhemmin sama mies katkesi keskeltä kranaatin täysosumasta. Kuolema lakkasi olemasta moraalinen kysymys”
― Väinö Linna, quote from The Unknown Soldier


“Everybody talks about freedom, citizens," the big man said gently, seeming to draw upon that very sure source of personal knowledge again, "but they dont really want it. Half of them wants it but the other half dont. What they really want is to maintain an illusion of freedom in front of their wives and business associates. Its a satisfactory compromise, and as long they can have that they can get along without the other which is more expensive. The only trouble is, every man who declares himself free to his friends has to make a slave out of his wife and employees to keep up the illusion and prove it; the wife to be free in front of her bridgeclub has to command her Help, Husband and Heirs. It resolves itself into a battle; whoever wins, the other one loses. For every general in this world there have to be 6,000 privates.”
― James Jones, quote from From Here to Eternity


“Don't make another's pain the source of your own happiness.”
― quote from The Paladin Prophecy


“The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from The Woodlanders


“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
― Joan Didion, quote from Slouching Towards Bethlehem


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