Malcolm Lowry

Though tragedy was in the process of becoming unreal and meaningless it seemed one was still permitted to remember the days when an individual life held some value and was not a mere misprint in a communiqué.

— Malcolm Lowry

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

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

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

What beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning?

— Malcolm Lowry

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

— Malcolm Lowry

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

— Malcolm Lowry

But my lord, Yvonne, surely you know by this time I can’t get drunk however much I drink.

— Malcolm Lowry

Nothing in the world was more terrible than an empty bottle! Unless it was an empty glass.

— Malcolm Lowry

The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it.

— Malcolm Lowry

There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful passage of courage and pride — the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right.

— Malcolm Lowry

In the final analysis there was no one you could trust to drink with you to the bottom of the bowl.

— Malcolm Lowry

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

Yes, I do love you, I have all the love in the world left for you, only that love seems so far away from me and so strange too, for it is as though I could almost hear it, a droning or weeping, but far, far away, and a sad lost sound, it might be either approaching or receding, I can’t tell which.

— Malcolm Lowry

And how could he know whether it was a good omen or not without another drink?

— Malcolm Lowry

The poor old creature seemed now indeed like someone being drawn, lured, into events of which he has no real comprehension, by people with whom he wishes to be friendly, even to play, who entice him by encouraging that wish and by whom, because they really despise and desire to humilate him, he is finally entangled.

— Malcolm Lowry

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

— Malcolm Lowry

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.

— Malcolm Lowry

I want your life filling and stirring me. I want your happiness beneath my heart and your sorrows in my eyes and your peace in the fingers of my hand.

— Malcolm Lowry

I wake to a darkness in which I must follow myself endlessly, hating the I who so eternally pursues and confronts me. If we could rise from our misery, seek each other once more, and find again the solace of each other’s lips and eyes.

— Malcolm Lowry

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

— Malcolm Lowry

What for you lie?" the Chief of Rostrums repeated in a glowering voice. "You say your name is Black. No es Black." He shoved him backwards toward the door. "You say you are a wrider." He shoved him again. "You no are a wrider." He pushed the Consul more violently, but the Consul stood his ground. "You are no a de wrider, you are de espider, and we shoota de espiders in Méjico.

— Malcolm Lowry

Christ," he remarked, puzzled, "this is a dingy way to die.

— Malcolm Lowry