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Surreal Quotes

Browse 402 quotes about Surreal.

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Surreal Quotes

“Where Truth Lies by Stewart Stafford My television lost picture, Grew lips, told the truth, Then it finished speaking, My voice froze after that. My elderly self turned, In a white, shining chair, Cutting my lips from me, To let the truth ooze out. The moon in three cups, Providence's hinterland, The old bait-and-switch, Shows truth has no price. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

TruthHonestHonestyTelevisionLipsSurrealTruthfulnessSurrealismTruth PoemTruth Poetry
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Without imagination, things were only as they appeared - and that was blindness. Things were more than they appeared, so much more. When he considered an oak tree, it was not just a tree. To someone small, like an ant, it was a whole landscape of rugged barky cliffs and big green leaf-plains that quaked when the sky was restless, a place of many strange creatures where fearsome winged beasts could pluck and devour someone in a blink.”

TruthImaginationImagineTreeStrangeExcitingScaryAppearanceDeceptionEyesThinkSurrealBlinkMoreBeholderAppearDecieveAntThough
Book:Dawn of Wonder
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“I partly base my financial decisions on the annual migratory patterns of Bigfoot, because maps are the new charts, as taught by the esteemed Ponce de Leon School of Beauty, Youth, Wealth, and Duck Farming, but what do you say to a man who wants to be his own cartographer?”

WealthMoneyYouthInvestingAbsurdDucksSurrealDuckBigfootCartography
Book:Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
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“The Greenland fjords are peculiar for the spells of completely quiet weather, when there is not enough wind to blow out a match and the water is like a sheet of glass. The kayak hunter must sit in his boat without stirring a finger so as not to scare the shy seals away. Actually, he can only move his eyes, as even the slightest move otherwise might mean game lost. The sun, low in the sky, sends a glare into his eyes, and the landscape around moves into the realm of the unreal. The reflex from the mirror-like water hypnotizes him, he seems to be unable to move, and all of a sudden it is as if he were floating in a bottomless void, sinking, sinking, and sinking.... Horror-stricken, he tries to stir, to cry out, but he cannot, he is completely paralyzed, he just falls and falls.”

SilenceImagerySurrealAnthropology
Book:Book of the Eskimos
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“Magritte’s variations on the same theme invite us to rethink conventional notions of originality, to look more carefully at the details and contrasts between different versions of the painting: we observe the architectural variations of the Belgian houses, the varieties of trees in the foreground, of the streetlamps and their shadows, and of the skyscapes. Some of these paintings are in portrait format, others in landscape; some, like the 1961 version, give the viewer a deeper sense of proximity to, or immersion in, the scene while in others the depicted world is more distant. Together, these variant paintings form an internal system of poetic rhythms and patterns in which cross-references abound, alongside allusions to older Belgian art, most notably La Maison rose (1892) by the symbolist William Degouve de Nuncques.”

ArtNightSurrealSurrealismArt TheoryMagritteSurreal ArtThe Sky Floats Over Us All
Author:Sotherby's
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“While the universe seems to hold its breath, my consciousness is thrust into an abyss, caught in the gravitational pull of unfolding chaos. It's as if the very fabric of existence has reached out, unleashing a cosmic tremor—the kind that reshapes galaxies and rewrites the laws of physics and fate on a whim—then leaned in and whispered, 'Bet you didn't see that coming.”

FateChaosAweCosmicExistentialMetaphysicalSurrealPsychological FictionSudden Change
Book:We Are Everyone
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“What is infinity? I haven’t a clue. But maybe that’s the whole point I’ve been attempting to explain to you. The fact that it’s not known Or seen Or heard. Infinity is every person, every being, every bird. Infinity is a simple mystery. It looks like a mystery. Tastes mysterious. Feels like something completely delirious. We cannot imagine what this sound could be. All we can imagine is infinity.”

WorldLifePhilosophyDeathDestinyFateJourneyTravelInfinitySurrealSurrealism
Author:F.K. Preston
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“What (we) wanted more than anything was to be close to each other, washing the dirt and dust from each other’s faces after our train chases, brushing the tangles out of our hair, sharing advice about boys and basketball, learning how to curse, grabbing a bottle of Coca-Cola and a Moon Pie from Mr. Shotts’ grocery store after school, dipping in a pond during the seven steamy months of the year.”

MenHumanityFallPowerfulComing Of AgeSurrealRiseIlluminateConversationalMoral Failures
Book:Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power
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“Sometimes I fish, and sometimes my vending machine is broken so I can’t. Thanks for all your Butterfly Smiles. I have them FOR SALE as Powdered Rose Substitute, for people who don't like the taste of their morning protein shakes.”

HumorFlowerRoseSmileAbsurdFishingButterflySurrealFish
Book:There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't
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“In Delirio Familiari by Stewart Stafford He devoured radioactive pizza, eyes bulging to breaking point. Every riddle imploded in a flash, daymare fission without a joint. He, the man of conjured letters; she, his spark that moderates. Janus creature, clockface duo, oddballs, but fitting mates. With dollops of ambrosial agony, in frenzied closeness, but witty, The Brain Surgeon’s Cookbook, A bromide concoction served as ditty. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

CreativityCreativeRelationshipNuclearAbstractCreative ProcessMuseSurrealSurrealismFunny Poem
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it." Yuki leaned against the car door. "But that's real hard, isn't it?" she said. "Real hard," I said. "But it's worth trying for.”

LifeDeathNovelRegretValueExistentialismJapanSurrealJapanese Literature
Book:Dance Dance Dance
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“For Having Offended Thee by Stewart Stafford A rebirth in my other kingdom, Deafening choruses of mute vampires, Stowaway's arrival not of my choice, Treading water on stranger's ground. The crunching gravel of past sins, Fine bone dust of wasted chances, Weighed down at Purgatory's door, The gatekeepers nod and admit me. A hurricane swirl of screaming souls, Housed within Infinity's planetarium, Whispers, pleas, a drowning outcry, Metaphysical smothering of bodily errs. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

JudgmentGuiltJudgementAfterlifeMetaphysicalSurrealPurgatoryDark PoetryPast SinsWasted Chances
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Theodora dreamed over the fire just beyond the tips of her toes, and Eleanor thought with a deep satisfaction that her feet were handsome in their ed sandals; what a complete and separate thing I am, she thought, going from my red toes to the top of my head, individually an I, possessed of attributes belonging only to me. I have red shoes, she thought —that goes with being Eleanor; I dislike lobster and sleep on my left side and crack my knuckles when I'm nervous and save buttons. I am holding a brandy glass which is mine because I am here and I am using it and I have a place in this room. I have red shoes and tomorrow I will wake up and I will still be here.”

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Author:Shirley Jackson
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“U-2200 is a heavily worn, approximately egg-shaped 1.07-meter-tall monolith of tenasserite limestone inhabited by Gua, a non-corporeal entity that claims to be the prehistoric Johorean god of forgetting how to ride a bicycle. [...] U-2200 claims to have dwelled within the stone since its carving, more than 5,000 years ago. Exactly what U-2200 did between that time and the invention of the first actual bicycle in the 19th century is a matter of some debate. Consensus among Organization academics is that U-2200 did nothing, and probably did not exist in its present form. U-2200, however, claims that the bicycle has been invented dozens of times by cultures in all parts of the globe over the course of the past 5,000 years, only for U-2200 to engulf, consume, and negate all human knowledge not only of the riding of bicycles but of the mechanism of the bicycle, before lapsing back into dormancy. It calls this “the Bicyclecycle.”

MythologySurrealDark HumorSpeculative FictionAbsurdismWorldbuildingUnreliable NarratorAncient ArtifactBureaucracy SatireSecret Organization
Book:There Is No Antimemetics Division
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“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.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“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.”

MenFallPowerfulComing Of AgeSurrealRiseIlluminateConversationalKaren HintonMoral Failures
Book:Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power
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“Chinese restaurants seem to be able to stuff a square meter of noodles into a tiny to-go box. If you had that same packing power, what would you cram into your pockets, and why would it be 33 ducks?”

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Book:Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
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“I just shared a near-death experience with a duck. Tell Grandmother I’ll be home by $2.99, but that I plan on using a coupon, so don't wait up for me.”

MoneyFamilyAbsurdDucksSurrealDuckDuck QuoteDuck QuotesNear Death Experience
Book:One Out of Ten Dentists Agree: This Book Helps Fight Gingivitis. Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Ask Nine More Dentists.: A BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm Production
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