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Leonora Carrington QUOTES

Leonora Carrington QUOTES

1 " 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 , The Hearing Trumpet

2 " I am afraid I am going to drift into fiction, truthful but incomplete, for lack of some details which I cannot conjure up today and which might have enlightened us. This morning, the idea of the egg came again to my mind and I thought that I could use it as a crystal to look at Madrid in those days of July and August 1940—for why should it not enclose my own experiences as well as the past and future history of the Universe? The egg is the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between the Big and the Small which makes it impossible to see the whole. To possess a telescope without its other essential half—the microscope—seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension. The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope. "

― Leonora Carrington , Down Below

3 " 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

4 " 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 , The Hearing Trumpet

5 " If I remember correctly writers usually find some excuse for their books, although why one should excuse oneself for having such a quiet and peaceful occupation I really don't know. 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 , The Hearing Trumpet

6 " Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason "

― Leonora Carrington

7 " 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 , House of Fear

8 " The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope. "

― Leonora Carrington

9 " 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 , Down Below

10 " The skeleton was as happy as a madman whose straitjacket had been taken off. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Skeleton's Holiday

11 " Police dogs are not properly speaking animals . Police dogs are perverted animals with no animal mentality. Policemen are not
human beings so how can police dogs be animals? "

― Leonora Carrington , The Hearing Trumpet

12 " It is impossible to understand how millions and 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, and very unhealthy."
"It has been going on for years," I said. "And it only occurred to relatively few to disobey and make what they call revolutions. If they won their revolutions, which they occasionally did, they made more governments, sometimes more cruel and 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 and healthy for human beings to have no authority whatever. They would have to think for themselves, instead of always being told what to do and think by advertisements, cinemas, policemen, and parliaments. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Hearing Trumpet

13 " Ring for your maid, and when she comes in we'll pounce upon her and tear off her face. I'll wear her face tonight instead of mine. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Skeleton's Holiday

14 " Strange how the bible always seems to end up in misery and cataclysm. I often wondered how their angry and vicious God became so popular. Humanity is very strange and I don’t pretend to understand anything, however why worship something that only sends you plagues and massacres? and why was Eve blamed for everything? "

― Leonora Carrington , The Hearing Trumpet

15 " 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 , The Hearing Trumpet

16 " The hyena found it difficult to walk in my high-heeled shoes. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Skeleton's Holiday

17 " A Brotherhood with the grim knowledge of what is better for other people and the iron determination to better them whether they like it or not. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Hearing Trumpet

18 " 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 , The Oval Lady, Other Stories: Six Surreal Stories

19 " On the outskirts of our sad savage town, I was overcome by a feeling of profound melancholy, though I fought it off by stuffing a large amount of jasmine essence up my nose. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Seventh Horse And Other Tales

20 " The skeleton's lodgings had an ancient head and modern feet. The ceiling was the sky, the floor the earth. It was painted white and decorated with snowballs in which a heart beat. He looked like a transparent monument dreaming of an electric breast, and gazed without eyes, with a pleasant and invisible smile, into the inexhaustible supply of silence that surrounds our star. "

― Leonora Carrington , The Skeleton's Holiday