“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, quote from Manhattan Transfer
“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, quote from Manhattan Transfer
“Weißt du, Jimmy, ich glaube, es wird ganz lustig sein, ein Weilchen in einer Redaktion zu sitzen."
"Ich fände es schon sehr lustig, wenn ich _irgendwo_ sitzen dürfte... Na ja, da bleibe ich eben zu Haus und passe auf das Baby auf."
"Sei nicht so verbittert, Jimmy, es ist ja nur vorübergehend."
"Das ganze Leben ist nur vorübergehend." (S. 250)”
― John Dos Passos, quote from 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, quote from Manhattan Transfer
“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, quote from Manhattan Transfer
“How do I get to Broadway?...I want to get to the center of things.”
― John Dos Passos, quote from Manhattan Transfer
“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, quote from Manhattan Transfer
“Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant's Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight.”
― John Dos Passos, quote from Manhattan Transfer
John Dos Passos
Born place: in Chicago, The United States
Born date January 14, 1896
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“Anyone who said money didn't matter had never had to count the coins that fell between the cushions of the couch.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Key of Knowledge
“[Joseph Bucklin Bishop said] "...The peculiarity about him is that he has what is essentially a boy's mind. What he thinks he says at once, says aloud. It is his distinguishing characteristic, and I don't know as he will ever outgrow it. But with it he has great qualities which make him an invaluable public servant--inflexible honesty, absolute fearlessness, and devotion to good government which amounts to religion. We must let him work his way, for nobody can induce him to change it.”
― Edmund Morris, quote from The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
“I shoved three CDs up my ass and got them out of Tower Records. It hurt like hell but I did it. New Michael Bolton, new Sting, and the best of Sammy Hagar. Totally painful. Definitely worth it.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from Eye Scream
“Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth--spring flowers, yet age--a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn't be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty--no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart--had lived, or wanted to--more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived--had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She might, perhaps, love him. How she had happened to be among the discards in Salzman's barrel he could never guess, but he knew he must urgently go find her.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Magic Barrel
“Only when he was conducting an autopsy could he forget the death of his beloved son. Ironically, playing with dead bodies released him from the death that had touched him.”
― Kōji Suzuki, quote from Spiral
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