Grotesque Quotes - Page 8

• I'm interested in the crevices, and the grotesque, and the unsavory. That started out when I was young... I've never quite been able to shake that.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Able, Never Quit, Crevice

  "Carrie Brownstein Discusses Her Memoir". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. October 27, 2015.

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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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• The general unreliability of all information presents a special problem in war: all action takes place, so to speak, in the twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light has to be guessed at by talent, or simply left to chance. So once again for the lack of objective knowledge, one has to trust to talent or to luck.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Twilight, Fog

  Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, Peter Paret (1989). “On War”, p.140, Princeton University Press

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• I've got to have something. I want to stop it all, the whole monumental grotesque joke, before it's too late. But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing, Too Late, Letters

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.19, Anchor

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• When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Southern, Quality

  "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (1960)

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• Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.

  Elliott Abrams

  Government, People, Firsts

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• I am sent too many mainstream scripts in which the older woman is really quite grotesque. Sometimes you read a script and you feel quite sick that they have to caricature older women in such a negative way.

  Sigourney Weaver

  Sick, Way, Scripts

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• Norman Rockwell spent his career painting pictures that helped people understand their own feelings...pictures that enriched their own experiences and celebrated their own lives. But the art establishment branded him an 'illustrator', a sentimental one at that. Real artists, they said were doing art for art's sake, not for the sake of the bourgeois public. Real artists were putting swiggles, smears or daubs of paint on the canvas. They were doing 'innovative' and 'creative' work. If they were hideous and grotesque; we know that's what life really is!

  Bill Bonner

  Art, Real, Careers

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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