Quotes by Nathanael West

Nathanael West

Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.

Art

Looks

Suffering

At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.

College

Expression

Years

Betty took him for a walk in the zoo and he was amused by her evident belief in the curative power of animals. She seemed to think that it must steady him to look at a buffalo.

Animal

Thinking

Zoos

But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.

Hard

Plant

Crowds of people moved through the streets with a dream-like violence.

Crowds

Dream

People

Every child, everywhere; in the whole world there was not one child who was not gravely, sweetly dancing.

Children

Dancing

World

Feeling is of the heart and nerves and the crudeness of its expression has nothing to do with its intensity.

Expression

Feelings

Heart

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.

Heart

Rocking It

Simple

He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.

Animal

Hurt

Pain

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.

Dark

Moon

Sea

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Animal

Art

Benefits

Book

Calm

Children

College

Communication

Conscious

Cowboy

Crowds

Dancing

Dark

Disappear

Dream

Drinking

Drunkards

Expression

Feel Better

Feelings

Friction

Hard

Having Hope

Heart

Horse

Hurt

Insane

Laughing

Limits

Looks

Math

Men

Moon

Needs

Numbers

Order

Pain

People

Perfect

Plant

Prayer

Rocking It

Romance

Sea

Simple

Solitary

Suffering

Tears

Thinking

Trouble

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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Quotes by Nathanael West

Nathanael West

Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.

At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.

Betty took him for a walk in the zoo and he was amused by her evident belief in the curative power of animals. She seemed to think that it must steady him to look at a buffalo.

But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.

Crowds of people moved through the streets with a dream-like violence.

Every child, everywhere; in the whole world there was not one child who was not gravely, sweetly dancing.

Feeling is of the heart and nerves and the crudeness of its expression has nothing to do with its intensity.

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.

He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.

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Topics by Nathanael West

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