Quotes by Malcolm Lowry

“Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days itd die of remorse on the third”

“Long for me as I for you, forgetting, what will be inevitable, the long black aftermath of pain.”

“If you feel like breaking, think of all the other dreams unfulfilled, the children unseen, the books unwritten, the work never to be done, the last nights together, the countless acres of anguish and the darkened haunted cities: consider the pity war distils and ourselves as creatures of luck, compared with the others who can gain no last moments more.”

“It can be regarded as a kind of symphony, or in another way as a kind of opera - or even a horse opera. It is hot music, a poem, a song, a comedy, a farce, and so forth. It is superficial, profound, entertaining, and boring, according to taste. It is a prophecy, a political warning, a cryptogram, a preposterous movie.”

“What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is.”

“The novel can be read simply as a story which you can skip if you want. It can be read as a story you will get more out of if you dont skip.”

“War is being declared to-morrow here so perhaps you can understand that I have been working under difficulties, but difficulties negligible compared with what others have to go through.”

“Mexico... is the most Christ-awful place in the world to be in any form of distress.”

“Muzzle a dog and he will bark out of the other end.”

Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the only normal writer left on earth -- and it is this that adds to his isolation and so too his so sense of guilt.

When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, weaving fearful vision ... A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with ones great work on Secret Knowledge, then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains the deficiency.

Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive ones baptism on storms promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under ones foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water.

What use were his talons and fangs to the dying tiger? In the clutches, say, to make matters worse, of a boa-constrictor? But apparently this improbable tiger had no intention of dying just yet. On the contrary, he intended taking a little walk, taking the boa-constrictor with him, even to pretend, for a while, it wasnt there.

Cant you see theres a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.

I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure.

Now you see what kind of creatures we are, Hugh. Eating things alive. Thats what we do. How can you have much respect for mankind, or any belief in the social struggle?

Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!

The Consul looked at the sun. But he had lost the sun: it was not his sun. Like the truth, it was well-nigh impossible to face; he did not want to go anywhere near it, least of all, sit in its light, facing it.

Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.

I like prefaces. I read them. Sometimes I do not read any further.