Quotes from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“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 West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“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 West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“He Sat in the window thinking. Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature...the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth wile.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“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 West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence make him mobile.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“Crowds of people moved through the streets with a dream-like violence.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“The way to be gay is to make other people gay," Miss Lonelyhearts said. "Sleep with me and I'll be one gay dog.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“He felt like a bottle that is being slowly filled with warm, dirty warter.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“But the romantic atmosphere only heightened his feeling of icy fatness.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“It was on this trip that Faye acquired a new suitor by the name of Homer Simpson.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“Perhaps I can make you understand. Let’s start from the beginning. A man is hired to give advice to the readers of a newspaper. The job is a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke. He welcomes the job, for it might lead to a gossip column, and anyway he’s tired of being a leg man. He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.