From the second book in the Travis (”permanently unemployed, by choice”) McGee series by John D. MacDonald, Nightmare in Pink (1964). I hope I turn some people on to these books by posting some of my favorite bits.
“… what is truly commercial is a kind of vulgarity upgraded just enough to look like good taste.”
“… the cop-eyes took the practiced flickering inventory — tailoring, fabric, shirt collar, knuckles and fingernails, shoe shine, haircut — all the subtle clues to status.”
“There is only one way to make people talk more than they care to. Listen. Listen with hungry earnest attention to every word. In the intensity of your attention, make little nods of agreement, little sounds of approval. You can’t fake it. You have to really listen. In a posture of gratitude. And it is such a rare and startling experience, such a boon to the ego, such a gratification of self, to find a genuine listener, that they want to prolong the experience. And the only way to do that is to keep talking. A good listener is far more rare than an adequate lover.”
“We are still carnivores, and money is the meat. If there’s a lot of money and any possible way to get at it, I think people will do some strange warped things. Hardly anybody is immune to the hunger, not if there’s enough in view. I know I’m not.”
“… as permanent as a black eye.”
“To score for the sake of scoring diminishes a man. I can’t value a woman who won’t value herself. McGee’s credo. That’s why they won’t give me a playboy card. I won’t romp with the bunnies.”
“I’ve never married and you can’t stay married, so perhaps all we’ve got is competence. And that makes a hell of a dry diet.”
“He had about him the same attitude toward sex as he had toward breakfast. He didn’t particularly care what was served as long as he could have a healthy breakfast that didn’t take too damned long.”
“I think we’re interested in each other, involved with each other, curious about each other. This was a part of exploring and learning. When it’s good you learn something about yourself too. If the spirit is involved, if there is tenderness and respect and awareness of need, that’s all the morality I care about.”
“Love is a gift, not a bargain.”
“She looked at me the way a butcher looks at a side of beef.”
“… my hotel looked like something designed to be thrown away after use. The old city was being filled with these tall tasteless rectangles, bright boxes which diminished the people who had to live and work in them. People kennels. Disposable cubicles for dispensable people. As I showered I wondered if perhaps these hideous tax-shelter buildings, with people sealed into the sour roar of manufactured air, didn’t play some significant part in creating New York’s ever-increasing flavor of surly and savage bitterness — a mocking wise-guy stink of discontent. Ugliness creates more ugliness. So these buildings could contribute, and so could the narrow greed of the truly vicious little trade unions. Screw you, buster, I’m getting mine. Thirty-hour week. Twenty-five hour week. Grind the last panicky dime out of the golden goose. So it’s down to twenty-five hours, which figures to ten bucks an hour, and anybody gets smart — all you do is walk out again and tie up the whole crappy city. But even when you’re working, what do you do with all those great raw boring horrible hunks of time? All those hours when if anybody looks at you just a little bit wrong, you want to smash them to a pulp. Man, we got a strong union. We got this city by the balls. But something is going wrong and nobody knows exactly what it is. You can read it in all the eyes you see.”
“You are as funny as a crutch.”
“We are all in a state of precarious balance, and it is difficult to realize how delicate that balance is until it is upset — either by emotions or clever chemistry.”
