As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married. – Ross MacDonald
As I stood there absorbing Hammett’s novel, the slot machines at the back of the shop were clanking and whirring, and in the billiard room upstairs the perpetual poker game was being played. – Ross MacDonald
The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure. – Ross MacDonald
Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I’ve been trying to turn it back into myth again. – Ross MacDonald
My half-suppressed Canadian years, my whole childhood and youth, rose like a corpse from the bottom of the sea to confront me. – Ross MacDonald
There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns – different states, if possible – and write each other letters once a year. – Ross MacDonald
I had reached the point when I could not see anything clearly ahead, I needed help, and I got it. – Ross MacDonald
When there’s trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble. – Ross MacDonald
I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need. – Ross MacDonald
We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete. – Ross MacDonald
