William March
William March (born William Edward Campbell) was an American author and a highly decorated US Marine. The author of six novels and four short-story collections, March was a critical success and heralded as "the unrecognized genius of our time", without attaining popular appeal until after his death. His novels intertwine his own personal torment with the conflicts spawned by unresolved class, family, sexual, and racial matters. March often presents characters who, through no fault of their own, are victims of chance, and writes that freedom can only be obtained by being true to one's nature and humanity.
“In the first place, good people are rarely suspicious; they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic conclusion as the correct one, and let matters rest there. Then, too, the normal are inclined to view the multiple killer as the as the one who’s as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get. He paused and then said that these monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters: they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself—just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be than the imperfect original from which it had been modeled.”
William March