Under The Volcano Quotes
"Night: and once again, the nightly grapple with death, the room shaking with daemonic orchestras, the snatches of fearful sleep, the voices outside the window, my name being continually repeated with scorn by imaginary parties arriving, the dark’s spin-nets."
"Love is the only thing which gives meaning to our poor ways on earth: not precisely a discovery, I am afraid."
"I think I know a good deal about physical suffering. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying."
"Sometimes I am possessed by a most powerful feeling, a despairing bewildered jealousy which, when deepened by drink, turns into a desire to destroy myself by my own imagination."
"But alas for the Knight of Sorry Aspect!"
"The air had yet a hint about it of dawn, the dawn this morning at Acapulco —green and deep purple high above and gold scrolled back to reveal a river of lapis where the horn of Venus burned so fiercely."
"The trees, the massive shining depths of these ancient fresno trees, how had she ever lived without them?"
"I was prepared for this, I was prepared for it."
"Where I come from they don’t run. We’re going through busting this way."
"The word was like a breaking heart, a sudden peal of stifled bells in a gale, the last syllables of one dying of thirst in the desert."
"All mystery, all hope, all disappointment, yes, all disaster, is here, beyond those swinging doors."
"The sunlight could not share his burden of conscience, of sourceless sorrow. It did not know him."
"Nothing in the world was more terrible than an empty bottle! Unless it was an empty glass."
"The shadow of an immense weariness stole over him… The Consul fell asleep with a crash."
"Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!"
"Ah, what a world it was, that trampled down the truth and drunkards alike!"
"The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it."
"The garden sloped off beyond into an indescribable confusion of briars from which the Consul averted his eyes."
"How can a man be expected to perform his marital duties without food?"
"I probably should have shot the bastardo out of hand: only he was a decent sort of swine –"
"Let’s get the hell out of it then. Unless you’re too tired for a walk."
"No, they’re the lowest form of animal life, except possibly – look out! – my God, I knew it –"
"Isn’t it rather indefatigably English or something of Geoff’s to be asleep?"
"I had another friend who went to China, but didn’t know what to make of that, or they didn’t of him, so he went to Spain too as a volunteer."
"I fell out of an ambulance with three dozen beer bottles and six journalists on top of me."
"Why is it yours? We evict those who destroy!"
"Genius, as I’m so fond of saying, will look after itself."
"You were so perfectamente borracho last night I think you must have killed yourself with drinking."
"Why couldn’t people hold their liquor? He himself had still managed to be quite considerate of Vigil’s position in Quincey’s garden."
"Thou art the grave buried love doth live."
"A sunflower. I know it watches me and I know it hates me."
"The nerves are a mesh, like, how do you say it, an eclectic systemë."
"The uncontrollable mystery on the bathroom floor."
"The streets. How can you resist the names of the streets? Street of Kisses. Street of Singing Frogs. The Street of the Little Head."
"In the middle of our life, in the middle of the bloody road of our life..."
"The seagull — pure scavenger of the empyrean, hunter of edible stars."
"Reflections of vultures a mile deep wheeled upside down and were gone."
"I have no responsibilities. And how can I be escaping from myself when I am without a place on earth?"
"This tea, too, was the subject of another matter that bothered him."
"But death and truth could rhyme at a pinch!"
"And yet there was something youthful and beautiful about her, like an illusion that will never die, but always remains hull-down on the horizon."
"Sub-Mundanes, or the Elementaries of the Cabbala, reprinted from the text of the Abbé de Villars: Physio-Astro-Mystic."
"The flesh in-clothed and the evil questioners."
"A centricle apartment suitable for love-nest."
"All at once Bolowski dropped the whole thing. He forgave his wife. He sent for Hugh and, with the utmost dignity, forgave him."
"The scents of the garden were heavy about them."
"It’s like being in a tank — did I say tank? Christ, I need a drink."
"Time, that one had hoped to bemuse, would at any moment begin to glide after you like a shark following a swimmer."
"His few ‘necessary drinks’, reasonable or outrageous, had worked wonders."
"His thick fair hair neatly slicked back, his freshly trimmed brownish greying beard, his stick, his dark glasses, who would say that he was not, unmistakably, a figure of complete respectability?"
"It’s really an extraordinarily nice day to take a trip."
"No angel with six wings is ever transformed."
"The typhoon spun invisibly in the midst of a tumult of broken pavements."
"Can’t you see it? We’re here together again, it’s us. Can’t you see that?"
"Do you like this garden, that is yours? See to it that your children do not destroy it!"
"Life changes, you know, you can never drink of it."
"Interchangeable ever were the terms of abuse with which the aggressor discredits those about to be ravaged!"
"May she be happy. May everything come, somehow, right. May we all be happy. God bless us."
"Christ, why can't we be simple, Christ Jesus why may we not be simple, why may we not all be brothers?"
"The truth was, it was perhaps one of those occasions when nothing would have done any good. Which only made it worse than ever."
"But what was the use of a will if you had no faith?"
"Was she doomed to an endless succession of tragedies that Yvonne Griffaton could not believe either formed part of any mysterious expiation for the obscure sins of others long since dead and damned, but were just frankly meaningless?"
"There was no callousness in their faces, no cruelty. Death they knew, better than the law, and their memories were long."
"And it was possible. It was possible! It was all there, waiting for them. If only she were alone with Geoffrey so she could tell him of it!"
"‘Forward to the Salón Ofelia,’ cried the Consul."
"It was as if, almost, he were waiting for something, and then again, not waiting."
"The morning grew hot. And now, one after one, the terrible trains appeared on top of the raised horizon, shimmering now, in mirage."
"A delicious smell of onion soup in side-streets of Vavin impregnated the early morning."
"A corpse will be transported by express…"
"How sensible to have had a mescal. How sensible! For it was the right, the sole drink to have under the circumstances."
"The only thing wrong with him, he was too hot."
"The path followed the stream through the jungle and at one place another path branched off to the right which went to Parián and the Farolito."
"The subdued roar of the falls filled the room like a ship’s engine… Eternity…"
"Why lost?… The voices were as if confused now with the blinding torrent of sunlight which poured across the open doorway, turning the scarlet flowers along the path into flaming swords."
"What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse?"
"The stars by their very being consoled her."
"The moon had gone. A hot gust of wind blew in their faces and lightning blazed white and jagged in the north-east."
"The mountains that had been lost from sight now stood ahead again as they walked on through the dwindling forest."
"No compunction touched Yvonne. She felt only an inexplicable secret triumph and relief."
"Only the poor, only through God, only the people you wipe your feet on, the poor in spirit, old men carrying their fathers and philosophers weeping in the dust."
"America perhaps, Don Quixote — if only you'd stop interfering, stop walking in your sleep, stop sleeping with my wife, only the beggars and the accursed."
"It's no good for your health. I shoot de twenty people."
"It was raining softly. Shapes hovered by him, holding his hand, perhaps still trying to pick his pockets, or to help, or merely curious."
"Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine."