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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• when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.

  Mark Twain

  Opportunity, Race, Losing

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.127, Univ of California Press

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Country, Thinking, People

  Thomas Bernhard (2010). “The Loser: A Novel”, p.28, Vintage

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• There is indeed no such thing in life as absolute darkness; one's eyes revolt and hasten to fill the vacuum by floating in sparks, dream patterns, figures whimsical and figures grotesque, shifting and clad in complementary colors, to appease the indignant cups and rods of the retina.

  Gelett Burgess

  Dream, Eye, Color

  Gelett Burgess (1916). “The Romance of the Commonplace”

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• Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I'm a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch — terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.

  Rube Goldberg

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "Rube Goldberg: Inventions!".

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• Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless...antique shops, clothes, hi-fi, etc. Don't say, don't write 'etc'. Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless, or stupid. You still haven't looked at anything, you've merely picked out what you've long ago picked out.

  Georges Perec

  Stupid, Writing, Long Ago

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• I never wanted to do something grotesque. I never wanted to shock. I wanted my audience to be happy, to be kind.

  Eva Zeisel

  Be Kind, Shock, Wanted

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• The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Spiritual, Men, Ideas

  "A Defense of Indian Culture". Essay by Sri Aurobindo, as quoted in Sisirkumar Mitra "The Vision of India", 1947.

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