Salvador Dali Quotes

“The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.”
― Salvador Dalí

“Quixote shines from Lorca and Picasso,
From Dalí and El Greco,
From the gloomy 'View of Toledo.'
He was born before Cervantes.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“Like Salvador Dali’s paintings of watches melting in the sand, time wanders at its own curious pace whenever you’re on vacation in a foreign country.”
― Laurie Nadel, Dancing With the Wind: A True Story of Zen in the Art of Windsurfing

“yes, i have dated Salvador Dali guy when i was a high school girl. he was a great lover. but i had to dump him because he stole my inspiration of bent clock*~* .... who cares...”
― Hiroko Sakai

“Salvador Dali was much too intelligent to be a great painter. And he knew it.”
― Jean-Michel Rene Souche, Paintings Catalogue: Paintings Catalogue by French Artist Jean-michel Rene Souche, Odessa

“There had to be something new, some fresh angle. As the rain pattered down around him, Kapenda thought. What was the weirdest thing he'd seen since this all started? He'd been in the tiny town of Chew Stoke a few weeks earlier, filming the remains of a vehicle that had been washed into a culvert and whose driver had died. In Grovehill, no one had died yet but there were abandoned cars strewn along the streets and surrounding tracks, hulking shapes that the water broke around and flowed over in fractured, churning flurries.

That was old. Every television station had those shots.

He'd been there the year before when the police had excavated a mud-filled railway tunnel and uncovered the remains of two people who had been crushed in a landslide. What they needed was something like that here, something that showed how weak man's civilized veneer was when set against nature's uncaring ferocity. He needed something that contrasted human frailty and natural strength, something that Dali might have painted - a boat on a roof, or a shark swimming up the main street. He needed that bloody house to collapse.

("Into The Water")”
― Simon Kurt Unsworth, Best New Horror: Volume 25

“Dangus - nei aukštai, nei žemai, nei dešinėje, nei kairėje, Dangus yra žmogaus, kuris Tiki, širdyje.”
― Salvador Dalí, Slaptas Salvadoro Dali gyvenimas

“Time melting like a Dali painting”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“A dandy," wrote Charles Baudelaire, "must be looking in his mirror at all times, waking and sleeping." Dali could easily have become the living proof of Baudelaire's dictum. But the literal mirror was not enough for him. Dali needed mirrors of many kinds: his pictures, his admirers, newspapers and magazines and television. And even that still left him unsatisfied.

So one Christmas he took a walk in the streets of New York carrying a bell. He would ring it whenever he felt people were not paying enough attention to him. "The thought of not being recognised was unbearable." True to himself to the bitter end, he delighted in following Catalonian television's bulletins on his state of health during his last days alive (in Quiron hospital in Barcelona); he wanted to hear people talking about him, and he also wanted to know whether his health would revive or whether he would be dying soon. At the age of six he wanted to be a female cook - he specified the gender. At seven he wanted to be Napoleon. "Ever since, my ambition has been continually on the increase, as has my megalomania: now all I want to be is Salvador Dali. But the closer I get to my goal, the further Salvador Dali drifts away from me."

He painted his first picture in 1910 at the age of six. At ten he discovered Impressionist art, and at fourteen the Pompiers (a 19th century group of academic genre painters, among them Meissonier, Detaille and Moreau). By 1927 he was Dali, and the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, a friend of his youth, wrote an 'Ode to Salvador Dali.' Years later Dali claimed that Lorca had been very attracted to him and had tride to sodomize him, but had not quite managed it. Dali's thirst for scandal was unquenchable. His parents had named him Salvador "because he was the chosen one who was come to save painting from the" deadly menace of abstract art, academic Surrealism, Dadaism, and any kind of anarchic "ism" whatsoever."

If he had lived during the Renaissance, his genius would have been recognized at an earlier stage and indeed considered normal. But in the twentieth century, which Dali damned as stupid, he was thought provocative, a thorn in the flesh. To this day there are many who misunderstand the provocativeness and label him insane. But Dali repeatedly declared: "... the sole difference between me and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!" Dali also said: "The difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist" - which is perfectly true. And he also claimed: "I have the universal curiosity of Renaissance men, and my mental jaws are constantly at work.”
― Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí: 1904-1989

“What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate, impassioned call for murder?”
― Gemma Files, Experimental Film

“They found a lush, green spot on a small hill behind the park. Danny could have sworn that it was that one hill from that Salvador Dali painting. You know, the one with the hill? Then again, he thought the same thing of every mailbox that he walked past each morning. Neither was in any way, form, shape, or former shape related to Mr. Dali. As such, Danny’s assumptions never really did hold much weight; they weighed only about two pounds each. "Wolf! Wolf! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Salvador Dali! Salvador Dali!”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Salvador Dalí’s greatest work is his moustache. And his melting clocks are fried eggs. Very dalícious.”
― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

“TARIAN TIGA ANGSA DAN IHWAL MIMPI (RE-IMAGINED SURREAL PSYCHO-MYSTICAL)

/1/ Swans Reflecting Elephants

Langit patah di hadapanku—
retakannya melingkar seperti iris mata kosmik
yang memerhatikan segala sesuatu
tanpa pernah memutuskan siapa yang benar.

Di telaga yang terbuat dari ingatan
tiga angsa menari
dengan sayap selembut doa yang belum sempat dikabulkan.
Namun di bayangan air
mereka berubah menjadi gajah
yang memikul menara-menara waktu
dengan kaki panjang seperti renungan
yang tak pernah selesai.

Di balik lengkung cahaya itu,
para malaikat dan iblis menunduk,
menahan napas sambil saling menuding
siapa yang pertama kali melukis cahaya
di atas kanvas semesta.
Nama-nama mereka menetes
dari pinggir kesadaranku—
Azazel, Ashmedai, Ashtaroth—
nama yang dulu kutakuti,
kini terasa seperti panggilan dari rumah yang melahirkanku dari api.

Aku mencoba menyentuh permukaan air,
namun telaga itu bergeming
dan memantulkan wajahku
dengan bentuk yang tak lagi kukenal.
Ketika jam di tanganku mencair
menjadi sungai kecil yang mengalir ke arah tak tentu,
aku tahu:
logika telah mati malam ini,
dan absurditas adalah satu-satunya cahaya yang tersisa.

/2/ Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate

Sebelum aku terbangun,
ada suara dengung yang menusuk seperti wahyu,
lahir dari buah delima
yang pecah menjadi orbit merah di balik kelopak mataku.

Dari dalam buah itu,
seekor harimau melompat
seperti ketakutan masa kecil
yang lupa aku kubur.
Lalu seekor gajah berkaki laba-laba
merayap di langit
dengan gerak lambat
yang menciptakan teror
lebih halus dari doa.

Tubuhmu—
sepi dan telanjang seperti nubuat tentang sang penyelamat—
mendorongku ke tepi kesadaran yang licin.
Aku melihat cermin yang menolak memantulkan diriku,
melihat ikan hiu yang membuka mulutnya
untuk melahirkan sepasang kekhawatiran,
melihat seekor ular
yang menyebut dirinya dengan nama yang tak ingin kuingat
namun terus memaksakan diri disebut.

Di bawah semua itu,
aku mendengar suara dalam diriku berbisik:
“Kesadaran tidak datang dari keheningan,
tetapi dari ketakutan
yang menolak kau mengerti.”

Dan aku tahu,
di titik itu eros dan tanathos
sedang menertawakanku
tanpa menawarkan penjelasan apa pun.

/3/ The Great Masturbator

Ketika aku memasuki tubuh mimpi yang terakhir,
aku menemukan diriku
di antara reruntuhan egoku sendiri.
Ada telur yang retak,
ada cangkang yang menyerupai rahim,
dan dari dalamnya keluar belatung-belatung bercahaya
yang memakan sisa-sisa masa laluku
dengan kelaparan yang nyaris asketis.

Seekor uir-uir memunguti mimpi yang patah
dan menyimpannya di jantungku
seperti pendoa yang menyembunyikan dosa muridnya.
Aku mencoba menghalaunya
namun tangan dan kakiku
seolah terbuat dari kaca yang teriris,
jatuh satu per satu
ke dalam sumur yang tak memiliki dasar.

Aku melihat diriku sendiri
berdiri di tepi kanvas,
telanjang dan kehilangan nama.
Di belakangku,
seekor kuda kejantanan
meringkik dengan suara yang memanggil dewa-dewa purba,
sementara di depanku,
cahaya retak seperti jemaat
yang kehilangan nabinya.

“Apakah ini kebangkitan?”
tanyaku.
Namun yang menjawab
bukan malaikat,
bukan iblis,
melainkan kesadaran
yang lahir dari kehancuranku sendiri:

Aku bukan lagi penyair.
Aku bukan lagi tubuh yang bermimpi.
Aku adalah luka yang menemukan bahasanya sendiri.
Dan dari absurditas inilah,
aku menetas kembali.

November 2025”
― Titon Rahmawan