Leonora Carrington Quotes

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.

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.

It is impossible to understand how millions & 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, & very unhealthy. It has been going on for years, I said. And it only occurred to relatively few to disobey & make what they call revolutions. If they won their revolutions, which they occasionally did, they made more governments, sometimes more cruel & 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 & healthy for human beings to have no authority whatever. They would have to think for themselves, instead of always being told what to do & think by advertisements, cinemas, policemen, & parliaments.

He eventually became an executive for a firm. This meant that he actually executed persons with showers of legal documents proving that they owed him quantities of money which they did not have. 'Firm' actually means the manufacture of useless objects which people are foolish enough to buy. The firmer the firm the more senseless talk is needed to prevent anyone noticing the unsafe structure of the business. Sometimes these firms actually sell nothing at all for a lot of money, like 'Life Insurance', a pretense that it is a soothing and useful event to have a violent and painful death.

If you are in a condition of inferiority, I think it affects you very much creatively. You have incredible visions but you might be too bashful to show them. Your creativity becomes inhibited. I've always found women as individuals as stupid or as intelligent as men. I've never had any reason to find them otherwise.

Art is a magic which makes the hours melt away and even days dissolve into seconds

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.

People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.

A Brotherhood with the grim knowledge of what is better for other people & the iron determination to better them whether they like it or not.

María picked a thorn off the top of a maguey, made thread out of the sinews of the leaf, and told the maguey: 'Pardon me for taking your needle, pardon me for threading the needle with your body, pardon me for love, pardon me for I am what I am, and I do not know what this means.

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.

Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason

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.

Sentimentality is a form of fatigue.

My head is a bier for my thoughts, my body a coffin.

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.

I never eat meat as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway

Anyway, Art [making] is a magic which makes the hours melt away and even days dissolve into seconds, isn't that so, dear lady?

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.

I warn you, I refuse to be an object.

One has to be careful what one takes when one goes away forever.

With shrieks of adoration it flung itself on human breasts, 'to crush you, to suck your life away. I cannot drag my own weight over the crust of the earth so you must carry me on your back so that in time you will be crippled with my weight.' These words are in every heart in the mating season.

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?

Thousands of people know my flannel knickers, and though I know this may seem flirtatious, it is not. I am a saint.

There is nobody that can make you happy, you must take care of this matter yourself.

Ring for your maid, and when she comes in we'll pounce upon her and tear off her face. I'll wear her face tonight instead of mine.

Virginia returned home, followed by the cats. There, in the kitchen, she gave birth to seven little boars. Out of sentiment she kept the one most like Igname, and boiled the others for herself and the cats, as a funeral feast.

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.

Do you believe, she went on, that the past dies?
Yes, said Margaret. Yes, if the present cuts its throat.

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.

I've always had access to other worlds. We all do because we dream.

The hyena found it difficult to walk in my high-heeled shoes.

Darling stop being philosophical it doesn't suit you, it makes your nose red.

Do not fear those who bear you ill will, they soon shall fall in shame, read Georgina, cackling with mirth.

I didn't have time to be anyone's muse ... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.

Beauty is a responsibility like anything else, beautiful women have special lives like prime ministers but I don't want that.

I unscrewed my own scrap of paper and read out: "Help! I am prisoner in the tower.