Grotesque Quotes - Page 8

• There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.

  Mark Twain

  Believe, Average, Incredibles

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.136, Univ of California Press

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• My tough and grotesque images were thrown on the roads and were stepped on by my critics, and I was talked about with scorn. I felt regret that readers only seemed to like something they were accustomed to.

  Kim Hyesoon

  Regret, Tough, Critics

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I came to grotesque language in the patriarchal culture under the dictatorship. The body that was broken into pieces is a sick body. I put the disease of this world and my sick body together.

  Kim Hyesoon

  Sick, Broken, Together

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.

  Robert Hass

  Thinking, Medicine, Water

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The one thing I'm quite critical of Hillary Clinton for, and it obviously hurt her, is that at some level, the Clintons had to know that she was going to run for president. Why did they feel it necessary to make tens of millions of dollars with speaking engagements? They must have known that it would look grotesque. The word for it is "buckraking." It's beyond me. I don't understand it.

  David Remnick

  Running, Hurt, President

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I've been through the whole western world, and it seems to me that there's more retail floor space devoted to the sale of books than food! There's more retail floor space devoted to the sale of books than there's been in the entire history of humanity! It's grotesque!

  William Gibson

  Book, Space, Humanity

  Source: craphound.com

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• What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.

  Zadie Smith

  Sublime, Balance, Half

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book [Lincoln in the Bardo]. Even the concept of talking ghosts is, from an aesthetic point of view, grotesque. But you seem compelled by that risk in order to get to the other end of the equation.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Views, Order

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• It is often said that the modern exhibition has ruined painting. It is an unfortunate fact that it does encourage competition, so that, to attract attention to his work, an artist is tempted to descend to sensationalism, whether it is expressed by strong colour, grotesque handling, unusual subject, or sheer size.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Strong, Artist, Competition

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• I have a great need to learn what the norm is by dealing with what is not the norm... with the grotesque and the fantastic.

  Alfred Brendel

  Desire, Needs, Fantastic

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• The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. .May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work - in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings].

  Max Beckmann

  War, Blood, Boredom

  "Max Beckmann". Book by Stephan Lackner, 1983.

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• Fierce invectives against women form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Church fathers.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Father, Writing, Atheism

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• Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a Biographical Introduction and Notes”

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• A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.

  John Dryden

  Character, Farce, Action

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• The exhibition of real strength is never grotesque. Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Strength, Real, Agony

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.40

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• In the corporate-owned media, men dressed like Ronald Reagan and women dressed like Rita Hayworth disseminate grotesque exaggerations and gossip in authoritative tones.

  Steven Weber

  Men, Media, Gossip

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

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• I've seen so many beautiful curvy women gain success in hollywood and then wither into bobble headed stick figures in some grotesque attempt to fit a revolting hollywood trend. I like real women, not the broomsticks that Hollywood has been selling lately.

  Matthew Gray Gubler

  Beautiful, Real, Hollywood

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• While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.

  Win Butler

  Beautiful, Church, Artistic

  "Arcade Fire". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. October 4, 2010.

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• The implication strongly is that Osama bin Laden is a Hitler, even though he has no state power at all. It's just grotesque if you seriously think about it.

  Tariq Ali

  Thinking, Osama Bin Laden, States

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2002.

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• Salvador Dali has been called kitsch, but, although some of this work may be grotesque, its brazenly self-conscious bad taste saves it from being true kitsch, which always strives to please.

  Denis Dutton

  Self, May, Kitsch

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• Rejecting the notion that democracy and markets are the same, young people are calling for an end to the poverty, grotesque levels of economic inequality, the suppression of dissent and the permanent war state.

  Henry Giroux

  War, Economic Inequality, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Skywhale is ambiguous. I think she is beautiful, but a lot of people think she is grotesque. You are drawn in and repelled at the same time, and it has to have that dynamic. My work has a certain element of abject mutation, uncertainty and darkness. Even she is dark - I mean she has ten breasts.

  Patricia Piccinini

  Beautiful, Mean, Dark

  Source: www.lucyreesart.com

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• Women all live a double standard, but this is actually sort of a beautifully grotesque parody of it. There's a weird kind of joy that I have in seeing [Hillary Clinton] trounce this essence of male bullshit.

  Joss Whedon

  Essence, Bullshit, Joy

  "Joss Whedon Explains Why Donald Trump Is America’s Scariest Big Bad". Interview With Patrick Caldwell, www.motherjones.com. November 1, 2016.

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• The collective income of all these people - the bottom half - is less than three percent of global household income, and so there is a grotesque maldistribution of income and wealth.

  Thomas Pogge

  People, Income, Three

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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