Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water.

— Malcolm Lowry

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

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

Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.

— Malcolm Lowry

I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure.

— Malcolm Lowry

I like prefaces. I read them. Sometimes I do not read any further.

— Malcolm Lowry

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

Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the only normal writer left on earth -- and it is this that adds to his isolation and so too his so sense of guilt.

— Malcolm Lowry

The Consul looked at the sun. But he had lost the sun: it was not his sun. Like the truth, it was well-nigh impossible to face; he did not want to go anywhere near it, least of all, sit in its light, facing it.

— Malcolm Lowry

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