Surrealist Quotes - Page 3

• Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.

  Anais Nin

  Illumination, Space, Tree

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• I tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous juggler Federico Garcia Lorca [the Spanish Surrealist poet]. It was very painful.

  Salvador Dali

  Sex, Men, Painful

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• I never knew I was a surrealist till Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me I was.

  Frida Kahlo

  Mexico, Woman Artist

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• On the other hand, Surrealism has been a part of Romanian literature since forever. Even before Tzara, who was originally Romanian, we had Urmuz, who was a surrealist before the term even existed. During Breton's era too, there was a very active Romanian Surrealist group (Ghérasim Luca, Gellu Naum, etc.) closely related to the French. They had to quit their activities as soon as the Soviet communists took over.

  Dumitru Tepeneag

  Hands, Forever, Groups

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I spend several days at a time without enough sleep. At first, normal activities become annoying. When you are too tired to eat, you really need some sleep. A few days later, things become
  strange. Loud noises become louder and more startling, familiar sounds become unfamiliar, and life reinvents itself as a surrealist dream.

  Henry Rollins

  Dream, Tired, Sleep

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• We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost. We know how to read every promise in faces-the latest stage of morphology. The poetry of the billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk billboards, the latest state of humor and poetry.

  Ivan Chtcheglov

  Years, Cities, Bored

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• The Big Sleep' is an unsentimental, surrealist excitement in which most of the men in Hollywood's underworld are murdered and most of the women go for an honest but not unwilling private sleuth (Humphrey Bogart).

  Manny Farber

  Sleep, Men, Hollywood

  Manny Farber (2016). “Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Faber: A Special Publication of The Library of America”, p.562, Library of America

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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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• 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 wore one of my Tanguy earrings and one made by Calder in order to show my impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract Art.

  Peggy Guggenheim

  Art, Order, Abstract

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• In recent times, Surrealist painters have used descriptive illusionistic academic methods.

  Hans Arp

  Academic, Used, Method

  "Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essais, souvenirs 1920-1965". Book by Jean/Hans Arp, p. 63, 1966.

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• I did exhibitions with the Surrealists (in Paris, in 1929) because their attitude revolted against 'art' and their attitude toward life itself was wise, as was Dada's.

  Hans Arp

  Wise, Art, Attitude

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• I was both charmed and moved by Midday with Buuel, Mexican filmmaker and writer Claudio Isaac's personal and very poetic recollection of his friendship with his mentor, the Spanish surrealist Luis Buuel.

  C. M. Mayo

  Mexican, Mentor, Poetic

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• I like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. I also like the Scottish artist John Byrne, another surrealist.

  Billy Connolly

  Artist, Scottish, Magritte

  "My ambition is to be regarded as a nuisance". Interview with Lisa O'Kelly, www.theguardian.com. March 24, 2012.

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• She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it.

  Isaac Marion

  Love, Dream, Sweet

  Isaac Marion (2016). “Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

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