Nathanael West quotes
-
“He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flapped like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moon-driven.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.28, New Directions Publishing
-
“At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.14, New Directions Publishing
-
“Betty took him for a walk in the zoo and he was amused by her evident belief in the curative power of animals. She seemed to think that it must steady him to look at a buffalo.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.36, New Directions Publishing
-
“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. When they finish, they feel better. But to those without hope, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. Nothing changes for them. They usually know this, but still can’t help crying.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.103, New Directions Publishing
-
-
“Let him ride a horse. He's a cowboy ain't he?”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.124, New Directions Publishing
-
“Every child, everywhere; in the whole world there was not one child who was not gravely, sweetly dancing.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust”, p.15, New Directions Publishing
-
“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears.”
-- Nathanael West -
“Feeling is of the heart and nerves and the crudeness of its expression has nothing to do with its intensity.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.119, New Directions Publishing
-
-
“It's solitary drinking that makes drunkards.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust”, p.51, New Directions Publishing
-
“Crowds of people moved through the streets with a dream-like violence.”
-- Nathanael West -
“Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : 1933 Miss Lonely hearts.
-
“Man spends a great deal of time making order out of chaos, yet insists that the emotions be disordered. I order my emotions: I am insane.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West (2012). “The Dream Life of Balso Snell”, p.14, Courier Corporation
-
-
“Numbers constitute the only universal language.”
-- Nathanael West -
“No dream ever entirely disappears. Somewhere it troubles some unfortunate person and some day, when that person has been sufficiently troubled, it will be reproduced on the lot.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West (1969). “Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust”, p.132, New Directions Publishing
-
“Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence make him mobile.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.19, New Directions Publishing
-
“It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West (1969). “Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust”, p.61, New Directions Publishing
-
-
“Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.4, New Directions Publishing
-
“You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one--like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail--making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin.”
-- Nathanael West -
“But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.89, New Directions Publishing
-
“Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.11, New Directions Publishing
-
-
“He felt as though his heart were a bomb, a complicated bomb that would result in a simple explosion, wrecking the world without rocking it.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.13, New Directions Publishing
-
“He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.39, New Directions Publishing
-
“He thought of how calm he was. His calm was so perfect that he could not destroy it even by being conscious of it.”
-- Nathanael WestSource : Nathanael West (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust”, p.51, New Directions Publishing
You may also like:
-
Budd Schulberg
Screenwriter -
Burgess Meredith
Actor -
Carson McCullers
Film writer -
Evelyn Waugh
Writer -
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author -
John Dos Passos
Novelist -
John Fante
Novelist -
John Schlesinger
Film director -
Lester Cole
Screenwriter -
Maureen Stapleton
Film actress -
Muriel Spark
Novelist -
Raymond Chandler
Novelist -
S. J. Perelman
Humorist -
Saul Bellow
Writer -
Thomas Pynchon
Novelist -
Thornton Wilder
Playwright -
Willa Cather
Author -
William Faulkner
Writer -
Flannery O'Connor
Writer -
John O'Hara
Writer