Manhattan Transfer Quotes

“The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“How do I get to Broadway?...I want to get to the center of things.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Do you know how long God took to destroy the Tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City and Brooklyn and the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven Seconds.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“But what can you do with success when you get it? You cant eat it or drink it. Of course I understand that people who havent enough money to feed their faces and all that should scurry round and get it. But success . . .” “The trouble with me is I cant decide what I want most, so my motion is circular, helpless and confoundedly discouraging.” “Oh but God decided that for you. You know all the time, but you wont admit it to yourself.” “I imagine what I want most is to get out of this town, preferably first setting off a bomb under the Times Building.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“There’s a rattle of chains and a clatter from the donkeyengine where a tall man in blue overalls stands at a lever in the middle of a cloud of steam that wraps round your face like a wet towel.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Bud edged up next to a young man in a butcher’s apron who had a baseball cap on backwards.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“There are lives to be lived if only you didn't care. Care for what, for what; the opinion of mankind, money, success, hotel lobbies, health, umbrellas, Uneeda biscuits . . .?”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“Why the hell does everybody want to succeed? I'd like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That's the only sublime thing.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“I'm going to drink till when I cut myself whiskey runs out. What's the good of blood when you can have whiskey?”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“I’m beginning to learn a few of the things I dont want,” said Herf quietly. “At least I’m beginning to have the nerve to admit to myself how much I dislike all the things I dont want.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“But none of em seem to realize that these things aren’t always a man’s own fault. It’s luck that’s all it is,”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow noon. . . . Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re safe as . . . as the Rock of Gibraltar.” “I know Viler, it certainly sounds good. . . . ” “Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do you? Think of your little girl.” “I am, that’s the trouble.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Emile, you’re a goodlooking fellow and steady and you’ll get on in the world. . . . But I’ll never put myself in a man’s power again. . . . I’ve suffered too much. . . . Not if you came to me with five thousand dollars.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Never mind dear. . . . It would have been too rich anyway. . . . You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.” “Oh goody.” “But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“We are caught up Mr. Perry on a great wave whether we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. A great deal is going to happen in the next few years. All these mechanical inventions—telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles—they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside, in the fore-front of progress. . . .”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Aint no good place to look for a job, young feller. . . . There’s jobs all right. . . . I’ll be sixty-five years old in a month and four days an I’ve worked sence I was five I reckon, an I aint found a good job yet.”
― John dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Ellen got off the bus at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftythird Street. Rosy twilight was gushing out of the brilliant west, glittered in brass and nickel, on buttons, in people's eyes. All the windows on the east side of the avenue were aflame. As she stood with set teeth on the curb waiting to cross, a frail tendril of fragrance brushed her face. A skinny lad with towhair stringy under a foreignlooking cap was offering her arbutus in a basket. She bought a bunch and pressed her nose in it. May woods melted like sugar against her palate.

The whistle blew, gears ground as cars started to pour out of the side streets, the crossing thronged with people. Ellen felt the lad brush against her as he crossed at her side. She shrank away. Through the smell of the arbutus she caught for a second the unwashed smell of his body, the smell of immigrants, of Ellis Island, of crowded tenements. Under all the nickelplated, goldplated streets enameled with May, uneasily she could feel the huddling smell, spreading in dark slow crouching masses like corruption oozing from broken sewers, like a mob. She walked briskly down the cross-street. She went in a door beside a small immaculately polished brass plate.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“And don't forget this, if a man's a success in New York, he's a success!”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in storewindows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist's, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thick lips, pouting lips, Cupid's bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“Earthquake insurance, gosh they need it dont they? Do you know how long God took to destroy the tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City an Brooklyn an the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven seconds. . . . Saykiddo what’s your name?”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“But what was it?” “There was a woman upstairs who did illegal operations, abortions. . . . That was what stopped up the plumbing.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“When you talk you talk with the little lying tips of your tongues. You dont dare lay bare your real souls. . . . But now you must listen to me for the last time. . . . For the last time I say. . . . Come here waiter you too, lean over and look into the black pit of the soul of man. And Herf is bored. You are all bored, bored flies buzzing on the windowpane. You think the windowpane is the room. You dont know what there is deep black inside.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Hello. I want to speak to Mr. Jack Cunningham please. . . . Hello. Is this Mr. Cunningham’s office? Mr. James Merivale speaking. . . . Out of town. . . . And when will he be back? . . . Hum.” He strode back along the hall. “The damn scoundrel’s out of town.” “All the years I’ve known him,” said the little lady in the round hat, “that has always been where he was.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Afterwards they walked east along Fourteenth. “Dutch cant we go to your room?” “I ain’t got no room. The old stiff wont let me stay and she’s got all my stuff. Honest if I dont get a job this week I’m goin to a recruiting sergeant an re-enlist.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“A ferry was leaving the immigrant station, a murmur rustled through the crowd that packed the edges of the wharf. “Deportees. . . . It’s the communists the Department of Justice is having deported . . . deportees . . . Reds. . . . It’s the Reds they are deporting.” The ferry was out of the slip. In the stern a group of men stood still tiny like tin soldiers. “They are sending the Reds back to Russia.” A handkerchief waved on the ferry, a red handkerchief. People tiptoed gently to the edge of the walk, tiptoeing, quiet like in a sickroom.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel