Leonora Carrington Quotes & Sayings

Sentimentality is a form of fatigue. — Leonora Carrington

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody. — Leonora Carrington

I think she was mistaken when she said I was torturing myself. I think that she interpreted me fragmentarily, which is worse than not to interpret at all. — Leonora Carrington

Do you believe, she went on, that the past dies?
Yes, said Margaret. Yes, if the present cuts its throat. — Leonora Carrington

I never eat meat as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway — Leonora Carrington

Do not give up hope entirely in spite of the horror of your situation. I am mobilising all my mental capacities to obtain your unconditional freedom. — Leonora Carrington

The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope.
— Leonora Carrington

The skeleton was as happy as a madman whose straightjacket had been taken off. He felt liberated at being able to walk without flesh. The mosquitoes didn't bite him anymore. He didn't have to have his hair cut. He was neither hungry nor thirsty, hot nor cold. He was far from the lizard of love. — Leonora Carrington

I often feel I am being burned at the stake just because I have always refused to give up that wonderful strange power I have inside me that becomes manifested when I am in harmonious communication with some other inspired being. — Leonora Carrington

I didn't have time to be anyone's muse ... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist. — Leonora Carrington

Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason — Leonora Carrington

Do not fear those who bear you ill will, they soon shall fall in shame, read Georgina, cackling with mirth. — Leonora Carrington

It is impossible to understand how millions & millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themselves Government! The word, I expect, frightens people. It is a form of planetary hypnosis, & very unhealthy. It has been going on for years, I said. And it only occurred to relatively few to disobey & make what they call revolutions. If they won their revolutions, which they occasionally did, they made more governments, sometimes more cruel & stupid than the last. Men are very difficult to understand, said Carmella. Let's hope they all freeze to death. I am sure it would be very pleasant & healthy for human beings to have no authority whatever. They would have to think for themselves, instead of always being told what to do & think by advertisements, cinemas, policemen, & parliaments. — Leonora Carrington

I do not know of any religion that does not declare women to be feeble-minded, unclean, generally inferior creatures to males, although most Humans assume that we are the cream of all species. Women, alas; but thank God, Homo Sapiens! Most of us, I hope, are now aware that a woman should not have to demand Rights. The Rights were there from the beginning; they must be Taken Back Again, including the Mysteries which were ours and which were violated, stolen or destroyed, leaving us with the thankless hope of pleasing a male animal, probably of one's own species. — Leonora Carrington

This was most alarming, what sort of terrible toil had deranged the poor woman? Would I also have to work day and night till I couldn't stop talking? Perhaps they made her shovel coal for a huge furnace, probably they kept a private crematorium, old people do keep dying off. Maybe they had a chain gang too and we would have to chop stones and sing sea shanties (this would explain why she wore the yachting cap.) — Leonora Carrington

We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves. — Leonora Carrington

Painting is my vehicle of transit. I don't always know where I am going or what it means. — Leonora Carrington

I am never lonely, Galahad. Or rather I never suffer from loneliness. I suffer much from the idea that my loneliness might be taken away from me by a lot of mercilessly well-meaning people. — Leonora Carrington

Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs, & objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh & bloodstream. I am no beauty, no mirror is necessary to assure me of this absolute fact. Nevertheless I have a death grip on this haggard frame as if it were the limpid body of Venus herself. — Leonora Carrington

Virginia returned home, followed by the cats. There, in the kitchen, she gave birth to seven little boars. Out of sentiment she kept the one most like Igname, and boiled the others for herself and the cats, as a funeral feast. — Leonora Carrington

The King sat down and I noticed that a brood of small transparent roots grew from the soles of his feet. 'Yes, I am also errant. My roots can find no soil and this is why they are visible. — Leonora Carrington

I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I'd only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I'm forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I've often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I'd perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I'm a recluse. — Leonora Carrington

I am so sad, Eleanor, so sad that my body has become transparent, I've shed so many tears. Is it possible to dissolve into water without leaving a trace? — Leonora Carrington

A Brotherhood with the grim knowledge of what is better for other people & the iron determination to better them whether they like it or not. — Leonora Carrington

I've always had access to other worlds. We all do because we dream. — Leonora Carrington

People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats. — Leonora Carrington

I warn you, I refuse to be an object. — Leonora Carrington

You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name. — Leonora Carrington

There is nobody that can make you happy, you must take care of this matter yourself. — Leonora Carrington

... The Antichrists are antichristing each other with antichristly ferocity so I must go and make peace. — Leonora Carrington

This is a love letter to a nightmare. — Leonora Carrington

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I won a helicopter in a crossword puzzle competition? There is not much hope though I am afraid, as they never give such practical prizes. — Leonora Carrington

Darling stop being philosophical it doesn't suit you, it makes your nose red. — Leonora Carrington

Thousands of people know my flannel knickers, and though I know this may seem flirtatious, it is not. I am a saint. — Leonora Carrington

One has to be careful what one takes when one goes away forever. — Leonora Carrington

With shrieks of adoration it flung itself on human breasts, 'to crush you, to suck your life away. I cannot drag my own weight over the crust of the earth so you must carry me on your back so that in time you will be crippled with my weight.' These words are in every heart in the mating season. — Leonora Carrington

I unscrewed my own scrap of paper and read out: "Help! I am prisoner in the tower. — Leonora Carrington

How could I write this when I don't even dare think about it? I am terribly anguished, yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memory ... I know that once this has been written down, I shall be delivered. You must know, otherwise I shall be persecuted to the end of my living days. But shall I be able to express with mere words the horror of that day? — Leonora Carrington

Anyway, Art [making] is a magic which makes the hours melt away and even days dissolve into seconds, isn't that so, dear lady? — Leonora Carrington

Art is a magic which makes the hours melt away and even days dissolve into seconds — Leonora Carrington

[At age 92:] There are places I'd like to return to. But not as I was then but as I am now. 'Cause I'm trying to understand. And I've understood nothing. — Leonora Carrington

The long tentacles of vision and understanding have withdrawn and all that is left to me is the ragged black hole of my loss. Loss and the world around. A noisy puzzle whose solution is another puzzle noisier and more stupid. The circle widens toward nothing.
The answer is hiding somewhere, if I could only read. — Leonora Carrington

Then it seemed that a cloud formed itself into an enormous bumble bee as big as a sheep. She wore a tall iron crown studded with rock crystals, the stars of the underworld.
All this may have been a collective hallucination although nobody has yet explained to me what a collective hallucination actually means. — Leonora Carrington

The full moon shone brightly between the trees, so I was able to see, a few yards in front of me, the origins of a distressing noise. It was two cabbages having a terrible fight. They were tearing each other's leaves off with such ferocity that soon there was nothing but torn leaves everywhere and no cabbages.
"Never mind," I told myself, "It's only a nightmare." But then I remembered suddenly that I'd never gone to bed that night, and so it couldn't possibly be a nightmare. "That's awful. — Leonora Carrington