Leonora Carrington > Quotes

“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

“People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

“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

“One has to be careful what one takes when one goes away forever.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

“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, The Hearing Trumpet

“Do you believe, she went on, that the past dies?

Yes, said Margaret. Yes, if the present cuts its throat.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Seventh Horse and Other Tales

“Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs, and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and 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, The Hearing Trumpet

“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

“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, The Hearing Trumpet

“Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason”
― 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, The Hearing Trumpet

“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 Hearing Trumpet

“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

“The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope.”
― Leonora Carrington (Down Below)

“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

“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 is a love letter to a nightmare.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Seventh Horse and Other Tales

“There is nobody that can make you happy, you must take care of this matter yourself.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

“The Antichrists are antichristing each other with antichristly ferocity so I must go and make peace.”
― 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, The Hearing Trumpet

“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

“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, The Seventh Horse and Other Tales

“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, The Seventh Horse and Other Tales

“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

“Darling stop being philosophical it doesn't suit you, it makes your nose red.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

“How can anybody be a person of quality if they wash away their ghosts with common sense?”
― Leonora Carrington, The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington

“Joan Miró gave me some money one day and told me to get him some cigarettes. I gave it back and said if he wanted cigarettes, he could bloody well get them himself.”
― 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, House of Fear

“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, The Seventh Horse and Other Tales

“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, The Seventh Horse and Other Tales