John D. MacDonald Quotes
Pale Gray for Guilt (1968)
From the Travis McGee Series
- People hate their cars. Daddy doesn't come proudly home with
the new one anymore, and the family doesn't come running out, yelling
WOW, and the neighbors don't come over to admire it. They all look
alike, for one thing. So you have to wedge a piece of bright trash
atop the aerial to find your own. They may be named after predators,
or primitive emotions, or astronomical objects, but in essence they
are a big shiny sink down which the money swirls--in insurance, car
payments, tags, tolls, tires, repairs. They give you a chance to sit
in helpless rage, beating on the steering wheel in a blare of horns
while, a mile away, your flight leaves the airport. They give you a
good chance of dying quick, and a better chance of months of agony of
torn flesh, smashed guts and splintered bones. Take it to your kindly
dealer, and the service people look right through you until you grab
one by the arm, and then he says: Come back a week from Tuesday. Make
an appointment. Their billions of tons of excreted pollutants wither
the leaves on the trees and sicken the livestock. We hate our cars,
Detroit. Those of us who can possibly get along without them do so
very happily. For those who can't, if there were an alternate choice,
they'd grab it in a minute. We buy them reluctantly and try to make
them last, and they are not friendly machines anymore. They are
expensive, murderous junk, and they manage to look contemptuous of the
people who own them.
- [I]n all emotional conflicts, the thing you find the most
difficult to do is the thing that you should do. -- Meyer
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