#grotesque

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. [...] There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. ↗

— Sherwood Anderson

#grotesque #truth #truths #beauty

Because most of my career in the classroom has been at art schools (beginning at Bennington in the 1970s), I am hyper-aware of the often grotesque disconnect between commentary on the arts and the actual practice or production of the arts. ↗

— Camille Paglia

#am #art #arts #because #been

In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water. ↗

— Natsuo Kirino

#grotesque #women #men

My surname for a mask to pretend! I have no stand to protest, but I will find it" (in the poem 'Tatiana Naturova at Time's End' in the collection 'The Green Divorce') ↗

— Christos Rodoulla Tsiailis

#humanity #nature #nature

I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint. ↗

— Alexander McQueen

#clothes #expect #face #fault #find

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself. ↗

— H. L. Mencken

#caricatures #cousins #especially #every #every man

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis, because I think that even though something grotesque or gross has been part of film since way back, what we accept or what we can get away with on the screen is broader now. ↗

— Ivan Reitman

#agree #away #back #because #been

But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous. When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals. ↗

— Michelangelo Buonarroti

#grotesque #imagination #monstrous #art

Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words "abortion" or "tax hikes" pass their lips. ↗

— Ann Coulter

#against #because #both #democrats #down

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider. ↗

— Tom Morello

#between #bowl #corporate #disparity #each