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Salvador Dali Quotes

Browse 13 quotes about Salvador Dali.

Salvador Dali Quotes

“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.”

“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”

“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")”

“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.”

“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!”