Under the Volcano Quotes

“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, Under the Volcano

“I have no house only a shadow. But whenever you are in need of a shadow, my shadow is yours.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“No se puede vivir sin amar”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“A little self-knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“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, Under the Volcano

“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, Under the Volcano

“Try persuading the world not to cut its throat for half a decade or more...and it'll begin to dawn on you that even your behavior's part of its plan.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“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, Under the Volcano

“Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“But who could agree with someone who was so certain you were going to be sober the day after tomorrow?”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“and as they stood in silence before her, prayed again. "Nothing is altered and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life." Indeed there was not, nor was this what he'd meant to convey. "Please let Yvonne have her dream -- dream? -- of a new life with me -- please let me believe that all that is not an abominable self-deception," he tried... "Please let me make her happy, deliver me from this dreadful tyranny of self. I have sunk low. Let me sink lower still, that I may know the truth. Teach me to love again, to love life." That wouldn't do either... "Where is love? Let me truly suffer. Give me back my purity, the knowledge of the Mysteries, that I have betrayed and lost. -- Let me be truly lonely, that I may honestly pray. Let us be happy again somewhere, if it's only together, if it's only out of this terrible world. Destroy the world!" he cried in his heart.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“He was safe here; this was the place he loved - sanctuary, the paradise of his despair.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“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, Under the Volcano

“I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Now you see what kind of creatures we are, Hugh. Eating things alive. That's what we do. How can you have much respect for mankind, or any belief in the social struggle?”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“¿LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN QUE ES SUYO? ¡EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO
DESTRUYAN!”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“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!”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Can't you see there's a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Hugh put one foot up on the parapet and regarded his cigarette that seemed bent, like humanity, on consuming itself as quickly as possible.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“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 wasn't there.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days, it'd die of remorse on the third—”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-dispairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated - a feat improperly recognized - boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Journalism equals intellectual male prostitution of speech and writing,”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“It's amazing when you come to think of it how the human spirit seems to blossom in the shadow of the abattoir!”
― Malcolm Lowry, UNDER THE VOLCANO

“Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan's footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession. Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn?”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Interchangeable ever were the terms of abuse with which the aggressor discredits those about to be ravaged!”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Love is the only thing which gives meaning to our poor ways on earth”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“They were the cars at the fair that were whirling around her; no, they were the planets, while the sun stood, burning and spinning and guttering in the centre; here they came again, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; but they were not planets, for it was not the merry-go-round at all, but the Ferris wheel, they were constellations, in the hub of which, like a great cold eye, burned Polaris, and round and round it here they went: Cassiopeia, Cepheus, the Lynx, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and the Dragon; yet they were not constellations, but, somehow, myriads of beautiful butterflies, she was sailing into Acapulco harbour through a hurricane of beautiful butterflies, zigzagging overhead and endlessly vanishing astern over the sea, the sea, rough and pure, the long dawn rollers advancing, rising, and crashing down to glide in colourless ellipses over the sand, sinking, sinking, someone was calling her name far away and she remembered, they were in a dark wood, she heard the wind and the rain rushing through the forest and saw the tremours of lightning shuddering through the heavens and the horse—great God, the horse—and would this scene repeat itself endlessly and forever?—the horse, rearing, poised over her, petrified in midair, a statue, somebody was sitting on the statue, it was Yvonne Griffaton, no, it was the statue of Huerta, the drunkard, the murderer, it was the Consul, or it was a mechanical horse on the merry-go-round, the carrousel, but the carrousel had stopped and she was in a ravine down which a million horses were thundering towards her, and she must escape, through the friendly forest to their house, their little home by the sea.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Hell,” he finished absurdly. “Because—” He produced a twenty-peso note and laid it on the table. “I like it,” he called to them, through the open window, from outside. Cervantes stood behind the bar, with scared eyes, holding the cockerel. “I love hell. I can’t wait to get back there. In fact I’m running, I’m almost back there already.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano