Surrealism Quotes - Page 2

• Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts.

  Andre Breton

  Believe, Men, Drug

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• Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

  Salvador Dali

  Museums, Trying, Purpose

  Salvador Dali (2013). “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí”, p.397, Courier Corporation

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• Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.

  Octavio Paz

  School, Order, Way

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.50, Arcade Publishing

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• The vice named surrealism is the immoderate and impassioned use of the stupefacient image or rather of the uncontrolled provocation of the image for its own sake and for the element of unpredictable perturbation and of metamorphosis which it introduces into the domain of representation; for each image on each occasion forces you to revise the entire Universe.

  Louis Aragon

  Vices, Use, Elements

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• Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares.

  Susan Sontag

  Dream, Witty, World

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.46, Macmillan

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• One can understand why Surrealism was not afraid to make for itself a tenet of total revolt, complete insubordination, of sabotage according to rule, and why it still expects nothing save from violence.

  Andre Breton

  Violence, Expect Nothing, Insubordination

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• I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized 'realistic' story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its 'realist' style.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Reality, Thinking, Order

  "Kubrick, Inside a Film Artist's Maze". Book by Thomas Allen Nelson, p. 14, 2000.

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• The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination.

  Wallace Stevens

  Play, Imagination, Essentials

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.259, Vintage

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• Dali was the great painter then and surrealism was a way of life.

  Vincente Minnelli

  Way, Painter

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

  Andre Breton

  Fate, Finding Yourself, Trying

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• There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

  Salvador Dali

  Life, Happiness, Happy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

  Andre Breton

  Existence, Elsewhere, Surrealist

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• Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

  Andre Breton

  Mean, Psychics, Moral

  "First Manifesto of Surrealism". Book by Andre Breton, 1924.

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• My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments.

  Ian Hornak

  Ideas, Perfect, Everyday

  The 57th Street Review, January 1976.

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• The other day I was down by the Hudson River, and I see two nuns in full habit rollerblading down the street holding hands. And I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I get it. The world is surreal and beautiful. And everything is fine.'

  Regina Spektor

  Inspirational, Beauty, Beautiful

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• People have the idea that an image must stand for something else, that the real meaning needs to be described with language. Instead it is the image itself that is the meaning.

  Mark Ryden

  Art, Real, Ideas

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• Surrealism could not be made up. It was the very electricity of the real.

  Lorrie Moore

  Real, Electricity, Made

  Lorrie Moore (2014). “Bark: Stories”, p.86, Vintage

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• Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.

  Salman Rushdie

  Atmosphere, Details, World

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• The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random.

  Andre Breton

  Gun, Hands, Cynicism

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• Surrealism is anathema for me. Because the surrealists made a joke of everything. And I consider life a tragedy.

  Louise Bourgeois

  Tragedy, Made, Anathema

  Source: www.procuniarworkshop.com

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• The activities of these parasites and degenerates gave rise to Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Pointillism, Constructivism, Orphism, Surrealism, Dada, and also Impossibleism, Supersurrealism, Dynamic Double-Dog Realism, Ishkabibbleism, and Mama, which is like Dada only nicer.

  Daniel Pinkwater

  Dog, Degenerates, Mama

  Daniel Pinkwater (2012). “Bushman Lives!”, p.70, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Exit, pursued by a bear.

  William Shakespeare

  Bears, Exit, Pursued

  'The Winter's Tale' (1610-1) act 3, sc. 3, stage direction

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• It was an honor to work with Samantha Morton on this Casablanca-esque, silent-film-esque, Americana photobooth Woolworth's hay day period piece of surrealism/ realism/ story time tell-tale-ism, black and white 35 mm film, washed in strange light, over this love hate tune, heartbreak song, life-goes-on lullaby, The Last Goodbye. It's a doorway into the future of the fatal past-tense. Get it?

  Alison Mosshart

  Goodbye, Song, Hate

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• When man resolved to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg. In doing this, he was practicing surrealism without knowing it.

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  Men, Knowing, Doe

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• THE ACT OF KILLING invents a new form of cinematic surrealism.

  Werner Herzog

  Killing, Form, Cinematic

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