Grotesque Quotes

The more outrГ© and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.

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

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.

I have to be careful to get out before I become the grotesque caricature of a hatchet-faced woman with big knockers.

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!

The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.

Our tolerance of the intolerable found a low threshold as early as the late 1950s with the grotesque excesses of McCarthyism, which destroyed so many honest lives, and then with the insane nuclear arms race and confrontations.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

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.

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It’s just grotesque.

The rush to books and universities is like the rush to the public house. People want to drown their realization of the difficulties of living properly in this grotesque contemporary world, they want to forget their own deplorable inefficiency as artists in life.

We want to feel hyper-alive, and it’s like, the more cartoonish and grotesque the level we can operate at, the better. It’s like the world we live in has become quite safe in a lot of ways, and it has become harder to genuinely transgress. But the desire to transgress is a real feeling.

An unchurched christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God’s new community.

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.

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.

The more grotesque your boss’s pay and the less he has do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work with the aim of being promoted to what he has.

Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.

It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent, aggressive state.

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.

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.

If we don’t preserve the oceans from nitrate runoff and plastic and chemicals, and if we don’t preserve it from acidification, and if we don’t preserve it from grotesque overfishing – too much money chasing too few fish – we’re going to have the most massive ecosystem on the planet in peril.

We will not have humanoid androids. It’s interesting: when you start trying to make robots look more human, you end up making them look more grotesque. It takes very little to go from super-attractive robot to hideous robot.

Fate is a shape-shifter. It is the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and forms into something grotesque. You think something is one thing, but then itВґs another.

If I am not grotesque, I am nothing.

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.

After a moment of shrinking back, we domesticate the grotesque.

I have no fear of anybody or anything happening to me in WWE because nothing can be as bad as some of the injuries I went through and some of the grotesque things that have happened to my body.

Conservatives should defend free speech – but we must not amplify it when it’s blatantly grotesque.

Since art is dead in the actual life of civilized nations, it has been relegated to these grotesque morgues, museums.

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.

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.

Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.

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.

The beautifully composed imagery of ’12 Years a Slave’ underscores the savagery of its subject, which is an American South not of knights and ladies but obscene values and a grotesque pageantry, every gorgeous shot of the languid landscape radiating toxicity like a hyperlush blossom that’s poison to the touch.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there’s no room for fault. But I don’t expect to turn things around all by myself. I’m not a saint.

Is it not a grotesque civilization which sends missionaries across the sea to save the souls of the heathen, and yet permits conditions at home that debauch the children at our very doors?

The night
Makes everything grotesque. Is it because
Night is the nature of man’s interior world?

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

Most of the songs I write are full of power, and I’m suspecting it may come from my love for grotesque Renaissance art and the Eurovision Song Contest.

The moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it histruth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced a falsehood.

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful.

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

To me the world seems grotesque, absurd, ridiculous, painful.

one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul

The grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated in [England] has led to the superstition that rubbing the bowl with it before putting the salad in gives sufficient flavor. It rather depends whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad.

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

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

… the random talk of people who have no chance of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which will weave itself into the moment for ever.

You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque.

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.

Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It’s an ego trip, and I’m not on an ego trip. I don’t have ambitions – I have a vision.

I don’t want to be grotesque, but when you’re 330 pounds, it’s hard to wipe your a-. You know?

I remember having to take detours around the Hollywood sign to avoid having to see this grotesque poster of myself on Sunset Boulevard.

As a drag performer, people have traditionally put us into the category of ‘pervert’ or ‘deviant’ or things like that. So I’ve always been really careful not to be vulgar or grotesque with sexuality.

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

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.

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.

Utopia is the grotesque en rose, the need to associate happiness – that is, the improbable – with becoming, and to coerce an optimistic, aerial vision to the point where it rejoins its own source: the very cynicism it sought to combat. In short, a monstrous fantasy.

Because most of my career in the classroom has been at art schools (beginning at Bennington in the 1970s), I am hyper-aware of the often grotesque disconnect between commentary on the arts and the actual practice or production of the arts.

When I see what is happening all over the world today – the violence – the stupid, arrogant, grotesque violence that is dominating humankind. I cannot not remember that there were other times, of course [the Second World War]. I never compare.

I don’t believe men want women to have grotesque plastic surgery or be undernourished and bony. All the plastic surgery in the world can’t stop you getting older.

Wherever the human mind is healthy and vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened pre-eminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will exist in full energy.

Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you’re in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can’t be thought of as cute.

Psychological horror I’ve always appreciated, like ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ The slasher movies and the grotesque movies are the ones that I’ve really been off for a while.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.

All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.

As a kid, I couldn’t articulate it but I sought out things that could. At first it was horror films – extreme panic and terror, grotesque and maniacal. These films calmed me and made me feel more connected in my experiences.

Is it not grotesque when the representatives of an antiquated myth-sorcery, who believes in trinity, angels, devils, hell, virgin-birth, bodily Ascension, making of water into wine, wine to blood, – when they want to impress us with their “science”?

The idea of getting old is horrific, but I don’t want to make it worse by becoming a grotesque caricature. A lot of people have made that mistake of trying so hard to hang on to their looks that they make themselves look really scary.

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.

I’m not sure I agree with the thesis, because I think that even though something grotesque or gross has been part of film since way back, what we accept or what we can get away with on the screen is broader now.

For me, marriage is a grotesque, unforgiving, clunky contrivance. Yet society pushes it as a shimmering ideal.

I tend to gravitate toward the realm of superstition (cures and such) and odd scientific facts (like bioluminescent shrimp and fistulated cows). I like the intimacy that I often find in the grotesque.

What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth. It has to be truthful and honest, even if it is ugly and grotesque.

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.

Size without shape is grotesque.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,–when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.

Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.

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.

The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it’s grotesque.

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.

It’s obvious nonsense, but it makes nice people feel good about themselves to do their bit for the planet. It’s 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.

I’m a cartoonist, it’s what I am at heart, so cartoons take reality and deform it and make it grotesque, you make it funny, but you alter it. If it works, it’s based on reality. That’s what I try to do.

If there were a bunch of Buddhist or Hindus or Roman Catholics carrying out grotesque acts of international terror, I would expect to see their faces on the side of bus.

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

Great horror movies are earned. ‘Halloween’ is an earned picture. Every moment of grotesque violence is earned by the suspense they’re able to maintain getting there.

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.

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.

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.

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.

incurable lover of the grotesque

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.

Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive.

As it is, the grotesque distortions of the global market mean that for every dollar the West dispatches to Africa in the form of aid, two dollars are clawed back through subsidies and tariff barriers: a monumental rip-off by the rich as they instruct the poor to accept ‘free’ trade or else.

It’s grotesque to believe the body we inhabit we want to inhabit 24/7.

A man without passion would be like a body without a soul. Or even more
grotesque, like a soul without a body.

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.

I keep two sentimental mementos on my desk to remind me of two favorite men. There is an inkwell that my Uncle Seymour made, a brass grotesque he mounted on a marble base. And my grandfather’s shaving cup is there, used to store pencils and pens.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of these conscience-soothing falsities

Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there’s no room for fault. But I don’t expect to turn things around all by myself. I’m not a saint.

The noble grotesque involves the true appreciation of beauty.

We live in a country of grotesque inequalities.

Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You’re for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words “abortion” or “tax hikes” pass their lips.

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.

he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.

This is the golden age of grotesque.

At six
I lived in a graveyard full of dolls,
avoiding myself,
my body, the suspect
in its grotesque house.

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.

Well, I don’t like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don’t you go up and change? It’s perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.

George theThird Ought never to have occurred. One can only wonder At so grotesque a blunder.

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.

Football, played at its highest level, is catastrophic. Even relatively minor afflictions are grotesque and bookworthy.

All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

I’m a collector of carvings. I love old, wooden, grotesque Gothic pieces, anything that has cherubs on it, satyrs and carved angels.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.

I think one of the few faults in Dickens is that mostly his lead characters are blanks – who is David Copperfield, who is Oliver Twist? And yet he takes such joy in populating the rest of his novels with these fantastic, grotesque people like Pecksmith and so on.

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

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.

For me, the single word “God” suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque.

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.

For me, I can’t watch violence when it’s too grotesque, and it’s just like, that’s revolting to watch. I don’t enjoy it. But when it’s a Tarantino film, I’m lining up outside the door to see it, and I’m expecting to see something really crazy, a lot of blood, and for it to be funny.

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.

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.

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.

Where words leave off, gesture begins. Don’t we speak of a person being speechless with rage, dancing with impatience, setting his teeth? The final motions of the soul are speechless, animal, grotesque, or of an incomparable beauty.

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.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

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.