Freakshows Quotes

“Circus can't just be beautiful. It has to be weird. It has to be frightening.”
― Elizabeth Schulte Martin, Everything You Came to See

“The man standing in the booth placing the tickets into her hands for the fun-house loomed largely in front of her with arms comprised of iron muscle. She remembered the gray cataract that covered over one of his eyes and the terrified feeling it gave her. She had been too young to understand the malady. To her; his eye looked as though it belonged to a creature from the sea. A frightening creature composed of reptilian and fish like attributes, which would pull unsuspecting prey underneath the darkest oceans. The smile on his face, with the crooked teeth, the cigar, contrasting with the bald head and unshaven face increased her sense of panic.”
― Jaime Allison Parker, River at the World's Dawn

“You!" he scorned. "You liar!" he concluded, addressing her chest.
"There's no need to get personal," she retorted, "everybody here is pretending to be something they are not.”
― P.S. Ballantyne, Behind May-belle's Curtain

“By evening, the Curtain household numbered seven, but joy did not arrive with the child. Neither did noise, for the child had not uttered a sound. Pa, still on the porch, strained his ears for any resonances of new life, but none came. He lit a lantern, around which nocturnal insects bashed into each other sadistically, hopelessly attempting to get near the fire that would certainly kill them if they were successful.”
― P.S. Ballantyne, Behind May-belle's Curtain

“But May-belle was not normal. She had the observational skills of one forced to sit on the sidelines of life, the crushing sensitivity that goes with some kinds of introversion, and the depleted self-confidence of one constantly reminded that their differences were not something to be celebrated.”
― P.S. Ballantyne, Behind May-belle's Curtain