David Ross MacDonald Quotes

When there’s trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.

There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns – different states, if possible – and write each other letters once a year.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

The Archer novels are about various kinds of brokenness.

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.