Surreal Quotes

“There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through.”
― Anaïs Nin, House of Incest

“Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“I walked into my own book, seeking peace.
It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.”
― Anaïs Nin, House of Incest

“I bought salvation from a man on the street. He said, "Go down to the beach and let the waves wash your feet.”
― Gabriel Rheaume

“Gregor’s serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month - the apple remained imbedded in his flesh as a visible souvenir since no one dared to remove it - seemed to have reminded even his father that Gregor was a member of the family, in spite of his present pathetic and repulsive shape, who could not be treated as an enemy; that, on the contrary, it was the commandment of the family duty to swallow their disgust and endure him, endure him and nothing more.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“I love to feel the temperature drop and the wind increase just before a thunderstorm. Then I climb in bed with the thunder.”
― Amanda Mosher, Better to be able to love than to be loveable

“Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“The call from Momma was like a bullet piercing my Washington bubble. Janice had been on short trip with her baby daughter locked safely in a car seat in the back. The baby was fussy and, as Janice reached back to grab her daughter’s pacifier that had fallen, another vehicle had blindsided her car. She survived it but her baby girl didn’t.”
― Karen Hinton, Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power

“…I was finding that reporting the news wasn't enough. I wanted to be more than just a paid observer. I wanted to be in the fight. I got my chance.”
― Karen Hinton, Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power

“These cities grew in approximately the same places as our cities do now, however different the shape of the continents was. There was even a New York that in some way resembled the New York familiar to all of you, but was much newer, or, rather, more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand-new toothbrush.”
― Italo Calvino

“A Harvey Nicks chick with throwaway morals and a trustfund appetite.”
― Saira Viola, Slide, a Modern Satire on the Excess of Greed

“A lost bird appeared in the court and was half an hour jumping around between the spikenard. It sang a progressive note, rising an octave at a time, until it became so acute that it was necessary to imagine it.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, In Evil Hour

“This is Lilly Heaven saying good night, and to all a very good night. Good night everybody. Here's wishing you pleasant dreams. Sleep tight. From all of us to all of you, a warm good night. And now we must, I'm afraid, say "good night." Good night, ladies and gentlemen, and good night. Thanks a lot and God bless you. This is Lilly signing off and wishing all of you out there from all of us in here the very best possible good night. I can only hope that you enjoyed watching us as much as we enjoyed being here. Good night. Pleasant dreams. Sleep tight. It's been wonderful being with you, and I hope you'll invite us into your living room again tomorrow night. From the actors and myself, from the staff here, I want to wish you all the best possible night and day before we meet again. It's been wonderful being with you. It's been truly grand. I only wish we could go on but I'm afraid our time is up, and so this is your Lily saying good night to you. Pleasant dreams. Good night all. Good night to you all. Good night to all of you. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. To all of you out there from all of us here good night. And pleasant dreams till we meet again. Good night to you all. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night.”
― Jean-Claude van Itallie, War and Four Other Plays - Acting Edition

“Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who he was and why he was—to strip it all bare and start from scratch, as it were. In his nearly 250 years of life and, now, as an old emaciated man completely estranged from his family and closest friends—albeit more by circumstance than by choice—he understood the importance of this process and revered it, for there were far greater things to be done and achieved in the dark, uncertain areas of existence than in those circumscribed—and thereby strained—by comprehensibility.”
― Ashim Shanker, Only the Deplorable

“Uma nêspera
estava na cama
deitada
muito calada
a ver
o que acontecia

chegou a Velha
e disse
olha uma nêspera
e zás comeu-a

é o que acontece
às nêsperas
que ficam deitadas
caladas
a esperar
o que acontece.”
― Mário Henrique Leiria, Novos Contos do Gin

“The dust began to swirl up in an eerie, hypnotic dance. The nanophase iron particles, responding to the intense magnetic fields, created tiny vortices of shimmering dust that moved like spirits of the air. The windless desolation of the moon had rarely been host to such a haunting display.”
― Daniel Thorman, The Zodiac Quest: A LitRPG Adventure

“The dream clung to her ribs like ivy, wrapping around her lungs, her thoughts.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, In My Dreams: A Haunting Romantic Fantasy About Star-Crossed Lovers Lost in Dreams and Hunted in the Real World

“She had belonged there. In that life. With him.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, In My Dreams: A Haunting Romantic Fantasy About Star-Crossed Lovers Lost in Dreams and Hunted in the Real World

“Grief makes time feel soft. Like film peeled off a reel. Like maybe nothing ever happened the way you thought.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Returning My Face: A Chilling Sci-Fi Thriller Where Someone Wants to Erase You and Live the Life They Always Wanted

“I caught my reflection smiling first, and I’ve been trying to get ahead of it ever since.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Returning My Face: A Chilling Sci-Fi Thriller Where Someone Wants to Erase You and Live the Life They Always Wanted

“I think memories have weight. And whoever I am now, I might be carrying ones that weren’t meant for me.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Returning My Face: A Chilling Sci-Fi Thriller Where Someone Wants to Erase You and Live the Life They Always Wanted

“Meaning is optional.”
― jackie ll, Pointless

“A thought passed by. It didn't stop. I didn't chase it. Good balance.”
― jackie ll, Pointless

“Pointless but very much on purpose.”
― jackie ll, Pointless

“They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

“Everything in the world feels suspended in its strange, still-evolving state — the violence, the losses, the sadness, the surreal circus of it all. So many of us reach back into nostalgia, searching for innocence that may never have existed. Struggling, scared, vulnerable, haunted by time’s distorted schedule. Surreal and brutal, yet undeniable.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, When We Were Invincible

“I’ve seen Narbonic (and now Skin Horse) described as surreal or absurd, but they always strike me as almost depressingly logical. What I try to do is start from a point of mild deviation from the norm and gradually, ploddingly, build from there until the plot becomes toweringly irrational and you have hamsters in flying islands and whatnot.”
― Shaenon K. Garrity, Narbonic

“The Behemoth & The Godspawn Surfer by Stewart Stafford

Jagged flesh in the behemoth's belly,
The city encircled by its tongue's pall,
I drank toxic fumes and pumice smoke,
As I tried surfing along a lava waterfall.

My obsidian bone board, surging fire,
Cryptid blood drips from a snapping jaw,
In a flash of the beast's fungal jawline,
I counted the vacant dead within its maw.

In a blaze, I was in its mouth and deeper,
I rounded the gullet's scalding turn,
Into a sea of swirling bones, stomach bile,
Where half-chewed skyscrapers churn.

"Leave me, Godspawn!" the monster roared,
"Spoil not my prey feasting for my fangs to cut!"
My board speared into its festering heart,
It ejected me in a howling thunderclap of sulphur soot.

And hurled me skyward, sand-blasted, and bruised,
The plume cleared, and the beast stood, wound-free—
Lava floods scorched, the city’s debt — a lifeblood hue,
By sunrise, my perennial task returned to enslave me.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Bad Halloween: A Crazies Night Chronicle by Stewart Stafford

I'm Rich—ambulance medic on Crazies Night,
Demented chariot driver in the mediverse,
Skeleton crew for swarms of ailing impostors,
Our dashboard crucifix, buffeting every curse.

Jittery, side-burned Jeff riding shotgun,
I tease his grumbling about missing fun:
"A toast with your Pumpkin Spice Latte!
Breakfast on me when our shift is done."

Behind us, a female living portrait groaned—
Drunk or high, headfirst, she kissed the road.
Mona Lisa frame unmounted for treatment,
delirious spoilers dropped for The Da Vinci Code!

Death's Reaper stood daring us in our path;
graveyard shift, centre line, gleaming scythe.
Brakes jammed, sirens blared, the prank waned—
This gothic vigilante traffic cop waved us by!

We dropped Patient Moaner at the hospital,
Jeff smoked, and I ate canteen Colcannon,
Our "bat signal" crackled, flashed in the cab:
"Cosplay brawl at the Hotel Shannon."

We drove off for more Boo-Boo Bus Bedlam
to hit our Gotham's streets and tend the injured.
Catherine wheel jack-o-lantern through windscreen;
The Pumpkin Bomber’s cackle went unheard.

Ears temporarily-deafened, thumbs up given;
Faces, hands, arms burned—scarred medics.
Flying glass cuts on our cheeks and necks:
Carers now mummified patients: sideline critics.

The first cracks of dawn chase shadows away;
A Grand Grimoire yielding to Grey's Anatomy,
Our carriage—the repair yard's hollow gourd,
All-Saints sunrise feast to shed All Hallows' agony.

On the Lord of Death's night, we didn't die:
Weary defiance met coffee and pumpkin pie.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“You don’t check out of the motel; you fade from it.”
― Thomas Miller, South of the Border The Motel That Eats Time