Quotes & Sayings About Surrealism

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore 'great truths' about the human condition. — Michael Richardson

This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism. — Salman Rushdie

Surrealism is not a movement. It is a latent state of mind perceivable through the powers of dream and nightmare. — Salvador Dali

The only word in the Martian language is written phonetically:
Kay-ray-kh-kuh-ko-kex.
It means whatever you want it to mean. — Blaise Cendrars

Surrealism - in particular with Salvador Dali - was all about ego. It was all about extreme individualism. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Oh, sheep. I've lost all my sobbing colours. — Dave McKean

[David] Salle's earlier work had been marked by a kind of spaciousness, sometimes an emptiness, such as surrealist works are prone to. But here everything was condensed, impacted, mired. The paintings were like an ugly mood. — Janet Malcolm

We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing. — Andre Breton

I am spilling fire on every side. But I do not trust the 500 billion flames which I am training like dogs. — Paul Eluard

Suddenly he stopped as if rooted outside the doors of one house; before his eyes an inexplicable phenomenon occurred: a carriage stopped at the entrance; the door opened; a gentleman in a uniform jumped out, hunching over, and ran up the stairs. What was Kovalev's horror as well as amazement when he recognized him as his own nose! — Nikolai Gogol

We have come from all the countries of the world and are going to Saintes-Maries de la Mer. Nomads of the enigma, we gather there each year after having carried our mystery through ordinary countryside and fluid towns. Since we become transformed by our wanderings we are despised by those who stand still and retain a memory of giant serpents and metallic green. — Raymond Queneau

I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe. — Nicholas Royle

Surrealism! What is Surrealism? In my opinion, it is above all a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject but in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical. — Paul Delvaux

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

I dozed, jolting occasionally at the driver's loud pronouncement of upcoming stops. At this early hour the bus hummed along quietly with few passengers, so the stops were infrequent. In the hazy surrealism of predawn, there really was not much to see
what I could make out was mainly countryside, though not what I would call quaint, and certainly no Shakespearean cottages or fairy folk peeping from the trees. — Carolyn Weber

How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise. — Andre Breton

Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject. — Andre Breton

It was an honor to work with Samantha Morton on this Casablanca-esque, silent-film-esque, Americana photobooth Woolworth's hay day period piece of surrealism/ realism/ story time tell-tale-ism, black and white 35 mm film, washed in strange light, over this love hate tune, heartbreak song, life-goes-on lullaby, The Last Goodbye. It's a doorway into the future of the fatal past-tense. Get it? — Alison Mosshart

I loved surrealism and abstract painting, and anything related to those. I always thought painting was the highest form of art. What led me to drawing was seeing so much self-important, pretentious, conceptual-type art in university. I wanted to reject that by making quick, fun art. — Neil Farber

Surrealism, the gospel of chaos, found itself compelled, from its very inception, to create an order. But at first it only dreamed of destruction - by poetry, to begin with - on the plane of imprecation, and later by the use of actual weapons. The trial of the real world has become, by logical
development, the trial of creation. — Albert Camus

When I was an adolescent, I abandoned my country at 23 years to come to Paris to know Andre Breton, the 'Pope of Surrealism.' And for three years, I was there working with him being a surrealist. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

For me, surrealism is in my blood; it's not an effort. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception ... as film is able to do today ... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism. — Walter Benjamin

Now the night's breath responds to the sea, which I can scarcely hear from here, as it reminisces about its shipwrecks. — Joe Bousquet

There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life's meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work. — Andre Breton

One can understand why Surrealism was not afraid to make for itself a tenet of total revolt, complete insubordination, of sabotage according to rule, and why it still expects nothing save from violence. — Andre Breton

I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from my inspiration. — Arthur Holitscher

[ ... ]i'm not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I'm creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have [ ... ] I'm trying to say I've invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that's fantastic. But if not, isn't this a cool monster? — China Mieville

Several people toss and turn in their sleep, startled by the lines of the newspapers in their dreams, knives out, lights out, lights out, knives out! — H.C. Artmann

I have said three words too many, too bad, I take them back, I add them. I have several times deserved death, especially in Greece, where I sawed up the palette of an old man who stalked my lady friends right up to my camp bed. I messed up the hairdo of the greatest criminal in Chaldea. For all that I did not have to make use of my daughter native to the lower part of her father's vision, all the plains as far as the eye can see which eat hampers full of mother of pearl. — Paul Eluard

THE ACT OF KILLING invents a new form of cinematic surrealism. — Werner Herzog

I am the soul in limbo. — Andre Breton

I do not understand why, when I ask for grilled lobster in a restaurant, I'm never served a cooked telephone. — Salvador Dali

Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. — Tristan Tzara

Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light. — Jyrki Vainonen

It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands. Listen well to what I say: turn on your heels and go back, not forward,[ ... ] — Comte De Lautreamont

Birds will be bored
If I'd forgotten something
Ring the bells of those school dismissals in the sea
What we shall call pensive borage
We start by giving the solution to the contest
To wit how many tears can be held in a woman's hand
1. as little as possible
2. in a medium-sized hand
While I crumple this star-lit paper
And while the everlasting flesh has once and for all taken
possession of the mountain summits
I live like a recluse in a little house in the Vaucluse
Heart king's order — Andre Breton

I guess Surrealism has a draw for me because it's an unknown world. It's a world of subconscious. Some things you can't really get your hands on very easily. Things that are kind of nebulous and they feel like they're not completely formed. You have to feel your way through that. — Gotye

The imaginary is what tends to become real. — Andre Breton

Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration. — Octavio Paz

I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. — Andre Breton

Oh,' said a very white body as it threw a wrist watch to the ground which broke without attracting anyone's attention, 'Oh, how can anyone not love poetry, natural machines, large white houses, the brilliance of steel, crimes and wild passions? — Robert Desnos

But in those first hours after you take it, your brain is tuned in like nothing you can imagine. Eyes like the Hubble telescope, sensing light that's not even on the spectrum. You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that's exactly right every time. — David Wong

Nothing proves the truth of surrealism so much as photography. The Zeiss lens has unexpected faculties of surprise! — Salvador Dali

A mysterious intersection of chance and attention that goes well beyond the existential surrealism of the 'decisive moment'. — Lee Friedlander

Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life. — Brad Holland

The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up. — Andre Breton

Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end. — Henry Miller

But surrealism is present in most of my pictures. — Vincente Minnelli

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality. — John Lennon

If surrealism ever comes to adopt a particular line of moral conduct, it has only to accept the discipline that Picasso has accepted and will continue to accept. — Andre Breton

I was thinking of the word Surrealistic ... I don't think it should be used exclusively with my photographs. The meaning is close but I think my tendencies are more toward the whimsical or absurd. Surrealism is more connected with morbidity. From that I am very far away. — Eva Fuka

He wishes he were a skilled poet, it would fit his chosen image perfectly; the poor, tragic, tortured artiste. But he has no talent for words, neither for paints nor music; his uselessness is tremendously total. — Curtis Ackie

Reality is changing Viena. You can not stop the cycle. — Veronica Purcell

I was raised by boys. I can hold my own, I can fight, and I love horror movies - simply for the scare factor and the surrealism. — Jessica Stroup

The play takes place on a ramp, hanging from a ramp, below a ramp, and to the sides of a ramp. — Rosalyn Drexler

[David] Maraniss sees [Barack] Obama as a man with a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating, and views much of the political process as ridiculous or surreal, even as he is deep into it. — Jane Mayer

My cartoon strips in college strived to have the Schulzian mix of surrealism and Charlie Brown angst. A bit of that combo shows up in 'Up.' — Bob Peterson

Gregor's serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month - the apple remained imbedded in his flesh as a visible souvenir since no one dared to remove it - seemed to have reminded even his father that Gregor was a member of the family, in spite of his present pathetic and repulsive shape, who could not be treated as an enemy; that, on the contrary, it was the commandment of the family duty to swallow their disgust and endure him, endure him and nothing more. — Franz Kafka

Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws. — Marcel Duchamp

Surrealism could not be made up. It was the very electricity of the real. — Lorrie Moore

After realising my natural affinity towards surrealism several years ago I decided to study it's origins and definitions. — Trevor Dunn

His thoughts were hemmed in. One can only draw curved lines on the terrestrial sphere which, as they extend, forever meet with themselves. At such intersections we always encounter what we have already seen. — Raymond Queneau

They floated for a while, two flesher-shaped creatures and a giant worm in a cloud of spinning metal fragments, an absurd collection of imaginary debris, glinting by the light of the true stars. — Greg Egan

This is the most beautiful night of all, the lightning filled night: day, compared to it, is night. — Andre Breton

Refusing what Adorno called that 'comfort in the uncomfortable' taken by the fantastic, surrealism seeks to reintegrate man into the universe. — Michael Richardson

There's only one woman left in the absence of thought that characterizes in pure black this cursed era. — Andre Breton

[On Jason Mashak's "I Was Trained to See Shadows", in his poetry book SALTY AS A LIP:] A nice bit of smooth, full-bodied, surreal story telling. I like it. — John Bennett

That's a beautiful speech, but nobody's listening. Let's go. — Alfred Jarry

When people use the term magic realism, usually they only mean 'magic' and they don't hear 'realism', whereas the way in which magic realism actually works is for the magic to be rooted in the real. It's both things. It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real. — Salman Rushdie

Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay is a stylistically daring writer in love with surrealism, credited with being 'the woman who reintroduced hardcore sexuality to Bengali literature'. But though the (male) establishment used this label of erotica to dismiss her work, the sex scenes have exactly the same transgressive function as her use of chronology and narrative voice. — Deborah Smith

There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state. — Andre Breton

Our Onirisme movement was a synthesis between the Romantic Fantastique and Surrealism. Dimov and I rejected automatic writing. We loved surrealist painters: Chirico, Magritte, Tanguy and especially Brauner (also a Romanian), who never respected the laws that Breton imposed in his manifests. — Dumitru Tepeneag

People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings. — Salvador Dali

Three men riding on a bicycle which has only one wheel, I guess that's surrealism. — Dong Kingman

Harton thought that if one squeezed humanity through a wine press, its essence would flow out as drops of policemen. — Georges Limbour

But no matte what kind of an understanding is adopted, whether associated with positivism, which asserts that the truth can only be reached by trial and error, or rationalism, which asserts that everything can be explained and grasped by reason, whether the perspective of romanticism, which overemphasizes imagination and sensitivity, or an approach based on ardent naturalism, whether based on realism, which aims to describe everything as it is including its shortcomings, or a curiosity-raising approach such as surrealism, whether idealism, which asserts that there is nothing real but ideas, or cubism, which asserts that there is nothing real but instead of direct description, or some other such current or perspective, that is not true poetry. — M. Fethullah Gulen

Surrealism was necessary - essential, even - in the 1920s to bridge the gap between rationalism and the subconscious. It started something important. But by the early '60s, it had become petit-bourgeois; it was too intellectual and romantic, and had ground to a halt. It had become respectable. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Everything leads us to believe that there exists a spot in the mind from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the high and the low, the communicable and the incommunicable will cease to appear contradictory. — Andre Breton

Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I simply should recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten. — Andre Breton

Fighting for freedom" is a myth. There's only freedom in uniting. You're not really free with an, "Us vs Them" mentality; because you are constantly defending yourself. And in fighting, there's no time for freedom. — Jason Daniel Chaplin

MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever. — Donald Barthelme

Exit, pursued by a bear. — William Shakespeare

As Peret asserts, the value of such stories resides in the fact that they respond to direct social necessity but in a way that is not obvious in a society dominated by what is utilitarian and functional. Rather they represent a natural surplus of imaginative abundance that may confound or reinforce the way we perceive the world, but which never does so in a simple way. Even though they may have no direct social use, they nonetheless embody the actual state of real relations between people. — Michael Richardson

Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality. — Andre Breton

Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares. — Susan Sontag

As far as the style, I was fascinated by surrealism. — Mark Mothersbaugh

Surrealism is a bourgeois disaffection; that its militants thought it universal is only one of the signs that it is typically bourgeois. — Susan Sontag

Happiness is not found in serenity, tranquility or surrealism. It is found in harmony of thoughts, actions, and reality. — Debasish Mridha

I learned in English class about surrealists. It was the first time I wanted to throw myself up so I could be marked present. Surrealism turns the whole world upside down. — A.S. King

Dreams are memories.
Memories are dreams.
But my time with you hasn't become a dream just yet.
Because the sensation of your kisses
keep me from sleep.
I'm in love,
God help me, I'm in love. — F.K. Preston

Surrealism can only deliver a reactionary judgment; can make out of history only an accumulation of oddities, a joke, a death trip. — Susan Sontag

Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

By giving words the latitude she does, (Marianne) Van Hirtum emphasizes their contagious qualities: they become almost like viruses, with which it is necessary to put oneself in harmony by sympathetic magic if one is not to be overwhelmed ... What is essential is to become one with the sickness, that is, in the context of language as a whole, to enter into contact with words. — Michael Richardson

... I know that if I were mad, after several days of confinement I should take advantage of any lapses in my madness to murder anyone, preferably a doctor, who came near me. At least this would permit me, like the violent, to be confined in solitary. Perhaps they'd leave me alone. — Andre Breton

As an evil cultist, I make an excellent evil cultist. Only I'm stupid, and not evil. And I worship nothing, really. — Will Advise

In an age of computer manipulation, surrealism has become banal, a shadow of its former self. — Milton Glaser

In this stillness that is at the same time movement, in this darkness that is at the same time light, change is found not in the realm of ideas but in the energizing desire that is realized through precipitation. Desire tends towards its own realization and change takes place when the desire for it shatters the bounds of the possible, breaking the dialectical equilibrium holding together the framework of what is existent. It is at such moments that the imaginary flows into the real and overwhelms it, inundating it until it has been absorbed. — Michael Richardson

I think it was more personal, but I certainly tried to adapt certain concepts of Surrealism. — Trevor Dunn

A constant human error: to believe in an end to one's fantasies. Our daydreams are the measure of our unreachable truth. The secret of all things lies in the emptiness of the formula that guard them. — Floriano Martins