John D. MacDonald

“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.”

“Please not yet. Those are the three eternal words. Please not yet.”

“We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.”

“A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else.”

“Vulnerability is the curse of the thinking classes.”

“It's a tricky, complex, indifferent society, Puss. It's a loophole world. And there are a lot of clever animals who know how to reach through the loopholes and pick the pockets of the unsuspecting.”

“I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess that we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.”

“In all emotional conflicts, the thing you find the most difficult to do, is the thing that you should do."--Meyer's Law”

“Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.”