John D. MacDonald Quotes

Darker Than Amber (1966)

From the Travis McGee Series

Next book: One Fearful Yellow Eye    Other John D. MacDonald Quotes.

• You can be at ease only with those people to whom you can say any damn fool thing that comes into your head, knowing they will respond in kind, and knowing that any misunderstandings will be thrashed out right now, rather than buried deep and given a chance to fester.
• Most people are [blind]. Eyesight is what you use to get around without running into things. But they find no esthetic value in what they see.
• Carrying a gun, especially a very utilitarian one, has the bully boy flavor of the ersatz male, the fellow with such a hollow sense of inadequacy has has to bolster his sexual ego with a more specific symbol of gonadal prowess.
• If there were people around colored green or bright blue, I would have a continual primitive awareness of the difference between us, way down on that watchful animal level which is a caveman heritage. But I would cherish the ones who came through as solid folk, and avoid the slobs and fools are bores as diligently as I avoid white slobs and fools and bores.
• ... a frightening number of people in the world are unaware of the actual living reality of the human beings around them. It is the complete absence of empathy in action. They believe themselves to be real, of course, yet they merely lack the imagination to see that other persons are also real in the same way and on the same terms. Thus, even though they go through the obligatory social forms and personal relationships, all other people are objects rather than people. If all other people are objects, then there can be no psychic trauma involved in treating them as objects.

Next book: One Fearful Yellow Eye    Other John D. MacDonald Quotes.

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