Quotes from book
Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

Under the Volcano is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry published in 1947. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead, 1 November 1938. The book takes its name from the two volcanoes that overshadow Quauhnahuac and the characters, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. Under the Volcano was Lowry's second and last complete novel.

“And how could he know whether it was a good omen or not without another drink?”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. VII (*p. 201)

“Yes, I do love you, I have all the love in the world left for you, only that love seems so far away from me and so strange too, for it is as though I could almost hear it, a droning or weeping, but far, far away, and a sad lost sound, it might be either approaching or receding, I can’t tell which.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. VII (*p. 200)

“In the war to come correspondents would assume unheard of importance, plunging through flame to feed the public its little gobbets of dehydrated excrement.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. VI (*p. 157)

“In the final analysis there was no one you could trust to drink with you to the bottom of the bowl.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. V (*p. 147)

“The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. III (*p. 97)

“Though tragedy was in the process of becoming unreal and meaningless it seemed one was still permitted to remember the days when an individual life held some value and was not a mere misprint in a communiqué.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. I (*p. 11)