Quotes from Leonora Carrington

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

Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs, and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and bloodstream. I am no beauty, no mirror is necessary to assure me of this absolute fact. Nevertheless I have a death grip on this haggard frame as if it were the limpid body of Venus herself.

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

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

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

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.

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.

This is a love letter to a nightmare.

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.

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.

The Antichrists are antichristing each other with antichristly ferocity so I must go and make peace.

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

Joan Miró gave me some money one day and told me to get him some cigarettes. I gave it back and said if he wanted cigarettes, he could bloody well get them himself.

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 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?

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

The long tentacles of vision and understanding have withdrawn and all that is left to me is the ragged black hole of my loss. Loss and the world around. A noisy puzzle whose solution is another puzzle noisier and more stupid. The circle widens toward nothing. The answer is hiding somewhere, if I could only read.

Then it seemed that a cloud formed itself into an enormous bumble bee as big as a sheep. She wore a tall iron crown studded with rock crystals, the stars of the underworld. All this may have been a collective hallucination although nobody has yet explained to me what a collective hallucination actually means.

If I remember correctly writers usually find some excuse for their books, although why one should excuse oneself for having such a quiet and peaceful occupation I really don't know. Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

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

There are things that are not sayable. That's why we have art.