Malcolm Lowry Quotes

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

  Malcolm Lowry

  Funny, Dog, Muzzle

  Malcolm Lowry, Sherrill Grace (1995). “Sursum corda!”

  77 Copy quote

• How, unless you drink as I do, could you hope to understand the beauty of an old Indian woman playing dominoes with a chicken?

  Malcolm Lowry

  Drink, Chickens, Indian

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• What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse?

  Malcolm Lowry

  Men, Soul, Littles

  Malcolm Lowry (2000). “Under the Volcano”, p.283, Penguin UK

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• Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Moon, Worry, Anxiety

  Malcolm Lowry, Kathleen Dorothy Scherf, Chris Ackerley (1992). “The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry”, p.177, UBC Press

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• 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.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Men, Weakness, Helping

  Malcolm Lowry (1965). “Selected letters”

  7 Copy quote

• God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light. My heart has the taste of ashes, and my throat is tight and weary with weeping. What is a lost soul? It is one that has turned from its true path and is groping in the darkness of remembered ways—

  Malcolm Lowry

  Heart, Moon, Night

  Malcolm Lowry (2015). “The 1940 Under the Volcano: A Critical Edition”, p.306, University of Ottawa Press

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• Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days it'd die of remorse on the third.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Couple, Beer, Civilization

  Malcolm Lowry (1985). “Under the Volcano”

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• To say nothing of what you lose, lose, lose, are losing, man. You fool, you stupid fool ... You've even been insulated from the responsibility of genuine suffering ... Even the suffering you do endure is largely unnecessary. Actually spurious. It lacks the very basis you require of it for its tragic nature. You deceive yourself.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Stupid, Responsibility, Men

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.317, Open Road Media

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• No, my secrets are of the grave and must be kept. And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Thinking, Land, Names

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.50, Open Road Media

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

  Malcolm Lowry

  Sometimes

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• How alike are the groans of love to those of the dying.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Sex, Dying, Moral

  Under the Volcano ch. 12 (1947)

  9 Copy quote

• For a time they confronted each other like two mute unspeaking forts.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Two, Forts, Mute

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.100, Open Road Media

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• Adiós," she added in Spanish, "I have no house only a shadow. But whenever you are in need of a shadow, my shadow is yours." "Thank you." "Sank you." "Not sank you, Señora Gregorio, thank you." "Sank you.

  Malcolm Lowry

  House, Shadow, Needs

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.302, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• Never think that by releasing me you will be free. You would only condemn us to an ultimate hell on earth. You would only free something else to destroy us both.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Thinking, Earth, Hell

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.531, Open Road Media

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• The howling pariah dogs, the cocks that herald dawn all night, the drumming, the moaning that will be found later white plumage huddled on telegraph wires in back gardens or fowl roosting in apple trees, the eternal sorrow that never sleeps of great Mexico.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Dog, Sleep, Night

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.49, Open Road Media

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• How shall the murdered man convince his assassin he will not haunt him.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Men, Assassins, Convince

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.105, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Only against death does man cry out in vain.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Men, Doe, Cry

  Malcolm Lowry (1965). “Selected letters”

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• There was no mistaking, even in the uncertain light, the hand, half crabbed, half generous, and wholly drunken, of the Consul himself, the Greek e's, the flying buttresses of d's, the t's like lonely wayside crosses save where they crucified an entire word.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Lonely, Light, Hands

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.49, Open Road Media

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• The Consul felt a pang. Ah, to have a horse, and gallop away, singing, to someone you loved perhaps, into the heart of all the simplicity and peace in the world; was that not like the opportunity afforded man by life itself? Of course not. Still, just for a moment, it had seemed that it was.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Horse, Heart, Opportunity

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.280, Open Road Media

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• The movements of some more little red birds in the garden, like animated rosebuds, appeared unbearably jittery and thievish. It was as though the creatures were attached by sensitive wires to his nerves.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Garden, Bird, Wire

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.101, Open Road Media

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• In the war to come correspondents would assume unheard of importance, plunging through flame to feed the public its little gobbets of dehydrated excrement.

  Malcolm Lowry

  War, Flames, Littles

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.223, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

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

  Malcolm Lowry

  Tragedy, Guilt, Add

  "Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place: Stories".

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