Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque situations would have made him squirm with annoyance, but because he saw the perspiring stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its tangle of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed.

— Nathanael West

Nathanael West Quotes

It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.

— Nathanael West

Romance

Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily.

— Nathanael West

Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily. Moreover, his confusion was significant, whereas her order was not.

— Nathanael West

Humanity... I’m a humanity lover. All the broken bastards...

— Nathanael West

Once he had tried to get fired by recommending suicide in his column. All that Shrike had said was : “Remember, please, that you job is to increase the circulation of our paper. Suicide, it is only reasonable to think, must defeat this purpose”.

— Nathanael West

You dedicate your life to the pursuit of pleasure. No over-indulgence, mind you, but knowing that your body is apleasure machine, you treat it carefully in order to get the most out of it.

— Nathanael West

A button machine makes buttons, no matter what the power used, foot, steam or electricity. They, no matter what the motivating force, death, love or God, made jokes.

— Nathanael West

We must take the long view – every defeat is a victory in a war of attrition.

— Nathanael West

As he stood smiling, a little wave crept up out of the general welter and splashed at his feet for attention. It was Betty.

— Nathanael West

But whether he was happy or not it is hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither. He had memories to disturb him and a plant hasn’t, but after the first bad night his memories were quiet.

— Nathanael West

It was on this trip that Faye acquired a new suitor by the name of Homer Simpson.

— Nathanael West

Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while.

— Nathanael West

All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while.

— Nathanael West

Tod didn’t laugh at the man’s rhetoric. He knew it was unimportant. What mattered were his messianic rage and the emotional response of his hearers. They sprang to their feet, shaking their fists and shouting.

— Nathanael West

Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque situations would have made him squirm with annoyance, but because he saw the perspiring stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its tangle of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed.

— Nathanael West

Love is but a flitting shadow, a lure, a gimcrack, a kickshaw.

— Nathanael West

It was very sad under the trees. Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was nothing but death-rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a funeral hush.

— Nathanael West

What a perfect escape the return to the womb was. Better by far than Religion or Art or the South Sea Islands. It was so snug and warm there, and the feeding was automatic.

— Nathanael West

At the sight of their heroes and heroines, the crowd would turn demoniac. Some little gesture, either too pleasing or too offensive, would start it moving and then nothing but machine guns would stop it. Individually the purpose of its members might simply to be to get a souvenir, but collectively it would grab and rend.

— Nathanael West

Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.

— Nathanael West

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