Grotesque Quotes - Page 3

• I strenuously object to the very word "grotesque" which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea...I would prefer my music to be described as "Scherzo-ish" in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo - whimsicality, laughter, mockery.

  Sergei Prokofiev

  Laughter, Quality, Nausea

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• Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention...All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Sarcasm, Emotional, Symphony

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• The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Long, Awkward, Moose

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume III (of 20)”, p.68, Trajectory Inc

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• Its obvious nonsense, but it makes nice people feel good about themselves to do their bit for the planet. Its vanity of a grotesque kind to believe that mankind, and our carbon footprint, has more impact on the future of Earth than Nature, which bends our planet to its will, as it sees fit.

  Charles Saatchi

  Nice, Believe, Vanity

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• I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

  John Ruskin

  Believe, Greatness, Men

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Fall”, p.158, Cosimo, Inc.

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• To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of. I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!

  Andre Breton

  God, Thinking, Atheism

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• Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly - a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.

  Mark Twain

  Regret, Opportunity, Thinking

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.787, Jazzybee Verlag

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• When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Talking, Vision

  Flannery O'Connor (1983). “Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise blood, The violent bear it away, Everything that rises must converge”, Signet Classics

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• I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.

  Aubrey Beardsley

  Aim, Ifs

  In an interview with The Idler (1896),as quoted in "Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography" by Matthew Sturgis, (p. 309), 1999.

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• The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink.

  Edward Abbey

  Aquariums, Violet, Ink

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.30, RosettaBooks

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• Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

  Mark Twain

  Sex, Men, Giving

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• For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Tragedy, Farce

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.823, GENERAL PRESS

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• The more outre' and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Incidents, Cases, Deductions

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection”, p.286, Lulu.com

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• The grotesque in my poems is the motion I use to put myself and the grotesque world together. So the miserable images I use in my poems are the same as the letters I send into the miserable world.

  Kim Hyesoon

  Together, Use, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods, appear to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  People, Sick, Ignorant

  Interview with Alvin Toffler, reprints.longform.org. January 1964.

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• I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.

  Amos Oz

  Piano, Trying, Literature

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

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• Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.

  U.G. Krishnamurti

  Unique, Creating, Mold

  "Mind is a Myth: Disquieting Conversations with the Man Called U.G". Book by U.G. Krishnamurti, 1987.

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• incurable lover of the grotesque

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Lovers

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. Lovecraft Complete Collection”, p.884, H. P. Lovecraft

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• Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.

  Edward Abbey

  Christian, Being True, Theology

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

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• We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Strength, Nature, Character

  "Frederick the Great". Book by Thomas Babington Macaulay Baron Macaulay, p. 90, 1842.

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• My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.

  Max Beckmann

  Art, Average, Fairy Tale

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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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• I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Southern, Doubt

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.23, Macmillan

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• The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

  Ayn Rand

  Government, Law, Competition

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.100, Penguin

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• The laws of Nature take precedence of all human laws. The purpose of all human laws is one - to defeat the laws of Nature. This is the case among all the nations, both civilized and savage. It is a grotesquerie, but when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.

  Mark Twain

  Opportunity, Race, Law

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, p.127, Univ of California Press

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