Matador Quotes

“It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays; for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists.”
― George Orwell, Fighting in Spain

“To kill for fun is the job of the psychopaths! And what is a matador, apart from being a mentally ill person?”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Her words echoed in his mind. I love you, she’d said. She loved him. Hope dawned in his face. Someone loved him, not for what he once was, but loved him as he was now. He bent to kiss her but she raised her head to look with desperation into his eyes.
She had to make him understand why she couldn’t stay. “I love you.” She repeated. “I won’t let him hurt you or any of my new friends.”
Enrico had never known fear. He knew it now. She would leave him. He knew she would, her sense of loyalty was matched only by his own. If she thought she could protect him by leaving, she would run rather than put his or anyone else’s life in danger.
She loved him. The words made his heart sing and at the same time brought him the greatest despair he had known since Katrina had betrayed him.”
― Grace Willows, Into My Heart

“Eğlenmek için öldürmek psikopatların işidir! Ve bir matador nedir, akıl hastası olmasının dışında?”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“much like a when a bullfighter comes home he struts through the matadoor”
― J.S. Mason, A Dragon, A Pig, and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar...and other Rambunctious Bites

“Dylan, Duende, Death and Lorca
Does Bob Dylan have Duende?
DUENDE dancers perform moving, unique, unrepeatable performances
Does Bob Dylan have duende? Do you have duende? What is duende?

Duende is a Spanish word with two meanings.

A duende is a goblin or a pixie that probably lives at the bottom of the garden and gives three wishes to old ladies who deserve a break.

The duende was best defined by Spain’s great poet Federico García Lorca during a lecture he gave in New York in 1929 on Andalusian music known as cante jondo, or deep voice. ‘The duende,’ he said, ‘is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.’

The difference between a good and a bad singer is that the good singer has the duende and the bad singer doesn’t. ‘There are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned.’

Some critics say Bob Dylan does not have a great voice. But more than any other performer since the birth of recorded music, Dylan has revealed the indefinable, spine-tingling something captured in Lorca’s interpretation of duende. ‘It is an inexplicable power of attraction, the ability to send waves of emotion through those watching and listening to them.’

‘The duende,’ he continues, ‘resembles what Goethe called the demoniacal. It manifests itself principally among musicians and poets of the spoken word, for it needs the trembling of the moment and then a long silence.’

painting off hell by Hieronymus Bosch
Hell & Hieronymus Bosch
Four elements can be found in Lorca’s vision of duende: irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical. I agree with Lorca that duende manifests principally among singers, but would say that same magic may touch us when confronted by great paintings: Picasso’s Guernica, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the paintings of heaven and hell by Hieronymus Bosch.

The duende is found in the bitter roots of human existence, what Lorca referred to as ‘the pain which has no explanation.’ Artists often feel sad without knowing why. They sense the cruel inevitability of fate. They smell the coppery scent of death. All artists live in a permanent state of angst knowing that what they have created could have been better.

Death with Duende

It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“She could see a police car zooming into the parking lot and she ushered with her hands like a bullfighter on a runway that had lost his cape, but needed to get out of Spain to atone for his sins”
― J.S. Mason, Whisky Hernandez