“I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“We merged our lonelinesses once again, in something less than love but sweeter than self. I didn’t get home to West Los Angeles after all.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“I’ve spilled all my secrets. How do you make people do it?” “I don’t. People like to talk about what’s hurting them. It takes the edge off the pain sometimes.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“What did the old man want?” “Your husband’s money, just like everyone else.” “But not you, eh?” Her voice was sardonic. “Not me,” I said. “Money costs too much.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“daughter?’ ‘She was a beautiful child.’ Mrs Williams’s eyes grew misty with the quasi-maternal feelings of a procuress.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“That isn’t your real motivation. I know your type. You have a secret passion for justice. Why don’t you admit it?” “I have a secret passion for mercy,” I said. “But justice is what keeps happening to people.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“I’m sick of always doing the professional thing for prudential reasons.’ I”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
Ross Macdonald
Born place: in Los Gatos, California,, The United States
Born date December 13, 1915
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“The seeds of love may sprout where they will, but we choose whether to water them and give them light or to pluck them like weeds from the soil.”
― Brent Weeks, quote from The Blood Mirror
“She was the missing ingredient they needed. The hint of nutmeg. Connie”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from The Last Anniversary
“The character for ‘mob’ is formed from the character for ‘nobility’ on one side and the character for ‘sheep’ on the other. So that’s what a mob is, a herd of sheep that turns into a pack of wolves because they believe themselves to be serving a noble cause.”
― Ken Liu, quote from The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
“You have the distinct appearance of a woman in need of something warm and furry.”
― K.M. Weiland, quote from Dreamlander
“It is rather odd to find Dunbar referring to dance as useless: ‘dancing, a phenomenon that probably ranks, along with smiling and laughter’, he writes, ‘as one of the most futile of all human universals’.126 I say it is odd because he of all people ought to be able to see past its apparent uselessness to the individual, to its supposed usefulness to the group. Perhaps he does, and calls it ‘futile’ tongue in cheek. But I'd rather agree with him, nonetheless, that smiling, laughter and dance are – gloriously – useless: how many of us really believe that when we dance, laugh, or smile we do so ultimately because of some dreary utility to the group to which we belong? Perhaps there is no end in view. Perhaps these spontaneous behaviours are pointless, with no purpose beyond themselves, other than that they express something beyond our selves. Perhaps, indeed, the fact that so many of our distinguishing features are so ‘useless’ might make one think. Instead of looking, according to the manner of the left hemisphere, for utility, we should consider, according to the manner of the right hemisphere, that finally, through intersubjective imitation and experience, humankind has escaped from something worse even than Kant's ‘cheerless gloom of chance’: the cheerless gloom of necessity.”
― quote from The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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