Literary Birthday – 24 July – John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald was born on 24 July 1916 and died on 28 December 1986.
John D. MacDonald Quotes
- My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.
- I want story, wit, music, wryness, colour, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.
- I am turned off by humourless fanaticism, whether it’s revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by an old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can’t see it all that way bore hell out of me.
- If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck.
- Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather.
- 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?
- 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.
John D. MacDonald was an American fiction writer best known for his mystery and crime novels, which sold an estimated 70 million copies worldwide. He wrote more than 70 books, including 21 hardboiled crime novels featuring private investigator Travis McGee, beginning with The Deep Blue Good-by. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners was adapted into the films Cape Fear (1962 and 1991). In 1972, he received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honour, the Grand Master Award, for his lifetime contribution to crime fiction.
Source for quotes: A-Z Quotes
Source for photograph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_D._MacDonald_c._1970%E2%80%931983.jpeg
by Amanda Patterson
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