Nathanael West · 185 pages
Rating: (8.5K votes)
“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
Nathanael West
Born place: in New York City, The United States
Born date October 17, 1903
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“Paranormal movies always got to me, because while I was fairly certain the Alien or Predator would die from a fireball between the eyes, and even Jason would be no match for a dragon, what could you do to a ghost?”
― Julie Kagawa, quote from Soldier
“It is true the Shining Isle is smoke and ashes and that darkness is wide over the land. But your long memories have failed you. Of all creatures, you should know that the darkness is seldom complete, and even when it is, the pinprick of light is not long in coming -- and finer for the great shroud that surrounds it.”
― Andrew Peterson, quote from North! or Be Eaten
“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer
“Sometimes, we play with love, but when you finally realize that you want to get serious, love plays with you.”
― quote from You’re the Password to My Life
“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
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