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People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness

John D. MacDonald

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John D. MacDonald
Age: 69 †
Born: 1916
Born: January 1
Died: 1986
Died: January 1
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Sharon
Pennsylvania
John Dann MacDonald
Inexplicable
Adoption
Endure
Cannot
People
Worthlessness

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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.
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A man with a credit card is in hock to his own image of himself.
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At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home.
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Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.
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The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.
John D. MacDonald
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We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.
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It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.
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If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck.
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In the morning I'm often anti-semantic.
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I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.
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When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.
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[To] me organized religion, the formalities and routines, [is] like being marched in formation to look at a sunset.
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You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.
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As I holed up in the City of Angels, I was also aware of a comforting feeling of anonymity. In the world's biggest third-class city I could pass unnoticed. I spoke the language. I was familiar with the currency. I could drink the water. I could almost breathe the air, late April air, compounded of interesting hydrocarbons.
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We have been endowed with the capacity and the power to create desirable pictures within and to find them automatically in the outer world of our environment.
John D. MacDonald
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Now each one of us, black or white, is a symbol. The war is out in the open and the skin color is a uniform. All the deep and basic similarities of the human condition are forgotten so that we can exaggerate the few differences that exist.
John D. MacDonald
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The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.
John D. MacDonald
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...it isn't foolish or wicked to enjoy. Wickedness is hurting people on purpose. I love what you are and who you are and how you are. You give me great joy. And you make horrible coffee.
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My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.
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Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?
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