Studs Lonigan Quotes

Life is sad enough without people writing sad books.

All his life he had wished and waited, and there had been no change, except for the worse.

He was sad because he had grown up, and because the years passed like a river that no man could stop.

They served the rich, and tried to think that they were rich.

Life was hard on mothers; but then, they just didn't understand.

His face was a gaze of primal obtuseness.

He had come to America, haven of peace and liberty, and it, too, was joining the slaughter, fighting for the big capitalists. There was no peace for men, only murder, cruelty, brutality.

So long, Lee. Give our regards to the Kaiser. And tell him there's a few boys on 58th Street who'll throw a party for him if he'll drop around.

He had a picture in his mind of Studs Lonigan courageously telling life and the world to stick itself up it's old tomato.

There was a drugged sanctimoniousness about the sappy-looking birds seated in the lobby. Studs felt that there wasn't a man or a regular guy among them.

He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and,gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he.

He told himself that he was a clown clean through. Every time a fly ball had been hit to him with men on the bases, he'd muffed it. Hoping for one thing, then another, and when he did get his chances -- foul ball. Girls, too. He'd never held one. Twice Lucy had given him the cold shoulder. That girl he'd knelt next to at Christmas Mass in Saint Patrick's once -- cold shoulder. Never got beyond wishing with her. Now Catherine. Football. He'd wanted to be a star high-school quarterback and he'd not had the guts to stay in school. Fighting. His kid brother had even cleaned him up. In the war when he'd tried to enlist, a leather-necked sergeant had laughed at him. He was just an all-around no soap guy.

Ever since he had been a kid, he had wished and waited, and there had been no change except for the worst.