Quotes & Sayings About Carnival Rides

Isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation are among the wiles we use to keep ourselves from dispelling every illusion that keeps us up and running. Without this cognitive double-dealing, we would be exposed for what we are. It would be like looking into a mirror and for a moment seeing the skull inside our skin looking back at us with its sardonic smile. And beneath the skull - only blackness, nothing. Someone is there, so we feel, and yet no one is there - the uncanny paradox, all the horror in a glimpse. A little piece of our world has been peeled back, and underneath is creaking desolation - a carnival where all the rides are moving but no patrons occupy the seats. We are missing from the world we have made for ourselves. Maybe if we could resolutely gaze wide-eyed at our lives we would come to know what we really are. But that would stop the showy attraction we are inclined to think will run forever.8 — Thomas Ligotti

Books are carnival rides for your imagination. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And where the Ferris wheel carried its passengers high and brought them low and raised them high and brought them low again, as if it were not merely a carnival ride but also a metaphor for the basic pattern of human experience. — Dean Koontz

Not everyone is going to like every carnival ride. — Matthea Harvey

When I was a kid and the carnival would come to the shopping centre, I'd go down and talk to all the people running the rides. I like that whole lifestyle, moving from town to town in a nomadic existence. — Randy Quaid

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl the fatherhood of God lies behind everything. This apparent chaotic world is not chaotic at all; if we step back and take it all in with the right perspective, we see that it is an intricately designed carnival ride. There is a fatherly purpose in it: it turns out that we thought we were being born into a world full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but what was happening is that our Father was taking us to a particularly spectacular fair with some really gnarly rides. In — Douglas Wilson

In reality, Little Ones, there are two winters. One made for kids; the other for adults. The one made for adults is always too cold and always too long. The one made for kids is always perfect. A kid winter is an endless and wild snow carnival where all the rides are free. — Carew Papritz

You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by. — Dorianne Laux

A carnival in daylight is an unfinished beast, anyway. Rain makes it a ghost. The wheezing music from the empty, motionless rides in a soggy, rained-out afternoon midway always hit my chest with a sweet ache. The colored dance of the lights in the seeping air flashed the puddles in the sawdust with an oily glamour. — Katherine Dunn

You hold in your hands a very special book. It contains one hundred carnival rides of terror. You must remember: horror can come from any direction. It can be as subtle as a spider web's caress, or as vicious as the drop of an axe blade. It can be grim as the reaper, or as sardonic as, well, Sardonicous. It can wear the garments of science or superstition; can be dressed in the trappings of fantasy or the fancy-free. But always it will terrify. And one of the bluntest of its instruments is the short-short story, one of the most difficult of literary devices to master. Not only must each word be perfect-but each comma and period. Nothing can be wasted. In the hands of master executioners, like the authors who fill this book-it can be deadly. So... Die-and die again- one hundred times... — Martin H. Greenberg

It's difficult to spend time in any carnival or amusement park and not realize that a repressed fear of death may be the one emotion that is constant in the human heart even if, most of the time, it is confined to the unconscious as we go about our business. Thrill rides offer us a chance to acknowledge our ever-present dread, to release the tension that arises from repression of it, and to subtly delude ourselves with the illusion of invulnerability that surviving the Big Drop can provide. — Dean Koontz

His words slow my pulse. His fingers, square and even, feel nonpareil entwined with mine. He is symmetry. He is color.
"Never," I tell him. "I will never go away."
"You're sure about that?"
"I'm sure I can't live with a Ram-sized hole in my chest."
"That would be a pretty big hole, I think," Ram says.
"Don't be so sure. You're short."
"Hey," Ram protests.
"I worry for you on carnival rides."
"I get on carnival rides just fine, thanks."
"The operator doesn't stop you?"
"Tim," He pauses. "Sometimes. — Rose Christo

He leaned in and kissed her softly. "If you're finally going to let yourself love me, we're going to date."
"We sort of have been."
"No." He caught her hands and pulled her into his embrace. "We've been trying very hard not to date. Let me show you our world. Let me take you to dinner and whisper temptations. Let me take you to ridiculous carnival rides and symphonies and dances in the rain. I want you to laugh and smile and trust me first. i want it to be real love if you are in my bed. — Melissa Marr

In fact, candy was at the top of the list of things she was supposed to avoid, especially holiday treats from strangers. But there were also dire warnings about public toilets, dogs (even on leashes), convenience stores (especially at night), unsupervised children and teens, electrical outlets (during storms), unlit rooms, steep staircases, carnival rides, banquet or buffet food, cocktails on a date, and all weather conditions. — Laird Barron