“Interchangeable ever were the terms of abuse with which the aggressor discredits those about to be ravaged!”

“Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-dispairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated - a feat improperly recognized - boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration.”

“¿LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN QUE ES SUYO? ¡EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LODESTRUYAN!”

“Under the Volcano” embraces everything from Dante to Freud to the cabala. Here it shambles like Cervantes, there it rages like Ahab, and every page of it pulsates on Out of Body Auto-Reply, that style of pure Lowry that points at once backward, to all European literature, and forward, to the mother of all nervous breakdowns.”

“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.”

“Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine.”

“-Mira, Frijolillo -el Cónsul oía sus propias palabras-, tener en tu contra a Franco o a Hitler es una cosa, pero tener a Actinio, Argón, Berilio, Disprosio, Niobio, Paladio, Praseodimio...-Mira, Geoff...-...Rutenio, Samario, Silicón, Tántalo, Telurio, Terbio, Torio...-Mira...-Tulio, Titanio, Uranio, Vanadio, Virginio, Zenón, Iterbio, Circonio, por no hablar de Europio y Germanio... ¡Hip!... ¡Y Columbio!... Contra ti y contra todos los demás, es otra -el Cónsul acabó su cerveza.”