A Carnival Day Quotes & Sayings

It had been a long while since I'd watched any television, and things had only gotten weirder. Beauty pageants for infants; ruddy men in trucker caps fighting over abandoned storage lockers; public shamings of compulsive hoarders and pre-diabetics; affluent suburban women made up like transvestite hookers, competing with each other in feats of coarseness and cruelty; barely literate pregnant teens with tattoos, unfocused eyes, and futures like wrecked cars; apoplectic crypto-fascists spitting bile and paranoia; a carnival midway of weight loss devices, hair growth creams, erectile dysfunction potions, and pottery from which herbs grew like green hair. It was like the day room of a surrealist mental hospital, or any big city ER on a summer Saturday night. — Peter Spiegelman

But it is at home and not in public that one should wash ones dirty linen.
[Fr., Car c'est en famille, ce n'est pas en public, qu'un lave son linge sale.] — Napoleon Bonaparte

Life's journey does not take place down an easy roadway, as some might imagine. It takes place inside a giant house with a million doorways. Every day of our lives we are faced with decisions to make, doorways to walk through. It can be confusing at times, like walking through a carnival maze. Some decisions we make are big, some small, but they all have consequences.. — K. Martin Beckner

I was in the New Zealand army for like four years, the exact period of when it was on the air, so I never saw it. — Rhys Darby

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped. — Ray Bradbury

Gilly had decided that this was a dream. The Witches' Carnival didn't exist in the real world. And the Gilly who existed in the real world was not brave or cunning enough to have done everything that she'd done in the past day. The real Gilly was not beautiful enough to be lying in bed beside a woman like Maggie. Gilly had decided this was a dream, and also that she'd let that real Gilly, deep asleep somewhere in the outskirts of Birmingham, wither away and never wake up.
Already, Gilly could see herself arcing across the earth bright as a comet, moving too fast for the Ashleys and Tracyes, the thousand tiny insults and humiliations of the waking world, to ever catch. — Kristopher Reisz

It is not only one person's work, it's really a partnership and collaboration during all these years. — Christo

Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway. — James J. Kilpatrick

Aaaand we have a winnerrrrr!" a man shouts into the mic in a singsong carnival voice as I lick the last of Patrick's ice cream from my fingers. "Pick out a prize for the beautiful girl."
"For you," Patrick says, kneeling in front of me with a moose in his outstretched hands.
I pull the stuffed animal to my chest. "Thank you. I shall love him always. I shall call him Holden Caulfield."
"From the book?"
"Yes, from the book. You were reading it when I saw you my first day here."
"You remember that?"
"It's one of my favorite books," I say.
"You were totally checking me out."
"Patrick! Not in front of Holden Caulfield!" I cover the moose's floppy ears with my hands, hoping neither he nor Patrick sees the red flooding my cheeks. — Sarah Ockler

A lover was affectionate and a husband was authoritative. His work was always way more important than his family. His work and his needs were to be accepted as uppermost in every way. She could take leave from her work for one day to take her child to the carnival but he could not. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.
I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again ...
But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house. — Anna Akhmatova

I will tell you a story," Schmendrick said. "As a child I was apprenticed to the mightiest magician of all, the great Nikos, whom I have spoken of before. But even Nikos, who could turn cats into cattle, snowflakes into snowdrops, and unicorns into men, could not change me into so much as a carnival cardsharp. A last he said to me, 'My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately, it seems to work backwards at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time; but frankly, you should live so long as that will take you. Therefore I grant it that you shall not age from this day forth, but will travel the world round and round, eternally inefficient, until at last you come to yourself and know what you are. Don't thank me. I tremble at your doom. — Peter Beagle

I went up to the tower. I thought I might find the woman and the boy there, in bed together. Or the boy and his father, enjoying some quality time, a dead man and a mad boy chuckling and joshing and exchanging their stories of being dead and being mad. — Stephen Gregory

For there are many twists and turns on any given path. How or where it ends is either destination or mystery. — C.C. Wyatt

On a Tuesday night they were wed,
And by Friday they were dead.
And they buried them in the churchyard side by side,
Oh my love,
And they buried them in the churchyard side by side."
Breaking away from Gideon with some reluctance, Sophie rose to her feet and dusted off her dress. "Please forgive me, my dear Mr. Lightwood- I mean Gideon- but I must go and murder the cook. I shall be directly back. — Cassandra Clare

Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one will ever know, just beecause I never have any trials. (Sara Crewe, A Little Princess) — Frances Hodgson Burnett

We don't knoe when we're going to make our exits. But one day we'll pass away from this carnival with all its masks and roles, and only a few transient props will remain after us, until they too are swept away. We will step outside time, leave what we call 'reality'. — Jostein Gaarder

Just as Josef K, the protagonist of Kafka's 'The Trial,' awoke one day to discover that he had become part of some unfathomable legal carnival, we, too are frequently waking to discover that the rules of the digital game have once again profoundly changed. — Evgeny Morozov

The world of "magick" is, nine times out of ten, a world where people can hide their deep-set insecurity and personal damage behind illusion, constructed identities and claims to privileged knowledge, power or spiritual status. A gaudy carnival magic show, conducted with props that have long since begun to disintegrate with age, that seems to function only to distract people from the real magic that is occurring all around them, in every facet of their lives, every day of their lives. While the rituals and magical techniques of the Temple seem overly simplistic in comparison with the loftier Qabalahs, tables of correspondences and secret formulae of "high" magick, they have one thing which high magick quite often forgets: a concrete function. — Jason Louv

Not to experience the reality why you are created is not to know God — Sunday Adelaja

When the economy goes sour, there are three different kinds of restaurants that do well: the smaller-scale neighborhood restaurants that don't ask much of you; those that have banked enormous goodwill by offering great value during the boom; and those with proven records of excellence, a sure thing. — Danny Meyer

She'd started swimming early in the morning, when the kids were asleep, when she thought he was asleep. She didn't know her absence woke him, that the shift in the bed was an earthquake. When she climbed back in, she smelled like salt and seaweed. Sometimes her hair would still be knotted on top of her head. She tried to keep it dry. She didn't want him to know. The problem with marrying the mermaid girl from the carnival was knowing that one day she'd swim away. — Erika Swyler

- The earth hums?
- Of course it does. What a stupid question! Don't you hear it? — Jeff Smith

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself. — Thomas Jefferson

Hey, princess."
"Hey," I whispered, as Ash slipped his arms around my waist from behind, drawing me close. I could feel his glare aimed at Puck over my head, a silent, protective gesture that spoke louder than any words. Mine. Back off. — Julie Kagawa

At three o'clock in the afternoon, all the fashionable world at Nice may be seen on the Promenade des Anglais - a charming place, for the wide walk, bordered with palms, flowers, and tropical shrubs, is bounded on one side by the sea, on the other by the grand drive, lined with hotels and villas, while beyond lie orange orchards and the hills. Many nations are represented, many languages spoken, many costumes worn, and on a sunny day the spectacle is as gay and brilliant as a carnival. Haughty English, lively French, sober Germans, handsome Spaniards, ugly Russians, meek Jews, free-and-easy Americans, all drive, sit, or saunter here, chatting over the news, and criticizing the latest celebrity who has arrived - Ristori or Dickens, Victor Emmanuel or the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. — Louisa May Alcott

Jeanne sensed herself becoming more depressed after tweeting. She felt lonely after all of her thoughts had left her and were now staring at her on the Internet. Jeanne sometimes felt fearful of posting her thoughts on twitter. After posting a thought to twitter she sometimes thought, "No, I should have saved that." Jeanne felt unsure as to why she would need to save her thoughts. Maybe she needed to somehow save up all of her thoughts like carnival tickets, and she would be able to one day trade them in for one big, good thing. She could possible trade them in for a giant stuffed animal with a disproportionately large head that is not a trademarked character but very similar looking to a trademarked character.

She thought that if she ever wrote a novel it would be made up of every thought she has ever had. She would title it "One Big Good Thing" even if it were small and bad. — Gabby Bess

Kerrigan?" she tried again.
"Aye, Lady Mouse. I am here."
Relieved, she smiled at the sound of his voice in her head. During the day, he was oft silent. But at night ... at night he would speak softly to her and tell her of his travels through time as he eluded those who were after him.
"Where are you today, my lord?"
"I'm in Venice, during a carnival. It's beautiful here. There are minstrels and acrobats all around. Plenty of places to hide from Morgen and her spies."
"You are safe?"
"Aye, Lady Mouse. I am always safe. But I've no wish to talk about me. How are you doing?"
"I miss you."
She swore she could feel his pain as well as her own.
"I miss you as well and I think of you constantly."
-Kerrigan and Seren communicating though their thoughts as they were apart. — Kinley MacGregor

Chance favours the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur

He rests in the graveyard of Ivry
a suburb that always
looks like the day
the carnival comes down.
And perhaps only I
still know
that he was alive. — Giuseppe Ungaretti