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Surrealism Quotes

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Surrealism Quotes

“Bonfire of Broken Hearts by Stewart Stafford A shivering man craving warmth, Mustn't let the fire consume him, Despite temptation heat flares, In arousal-seared microseconds. Lured in with passion's promise, A stray spark or lick of flame is all Love ignites into walking fireball— Devotion's immolation sacrifice. On a cracked cardiac bonfire, Toughened muscles take time to burn, An atrophied, coarse chest slump, Once burned it is charcoal brittle. In the hall of mirrors' reflection, ICU, but do you see any of me? No salve - a scorched psyche set free. © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

LovePoetryHeartbreakPsychologicalSurrealismLove And LossContemporary PoetryDark PoetryAnti ValentineStewart Stafford
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“I’ll make you swallow a firing sea.”

HeartbreakRevengeSurrealismEmotional PowerFeminine VoiceNgerhr
Book:SONG FOR YOU / CÂNTEC PENTRU TINE (Bilingual English–Romanian Edition / Ediție bilingvă engleză–română / 2025): Poems of Love, Madness & Resurrection / ... nebunie și renaștere
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“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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“As Peret asserts, the value of such stories resides in the fact that they respond to direct social necessity but in a way that is not obvious in a society dominated by what is utilitarian and functional. Rather they represent a natural surplus of imaginative abundance that may confound or reinforce the way we perceive the world, but which never does so in a simple way. Even though they may have no direct social use, they nonetheless embody the actual state of real relations between people.”

StoriesImaginationSurrealismPeret
Book:Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World
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“Everything reminded him of something else: the fragrance of a peach-skin was like opening his stamp-album, the chack-chack of the wheatear not only recalled mist on the hills, but also reminded him of foxgloves, droplets of rain tapping from the mauve bells on to a dock leaf or fern. Ferns reminded him of his mother's soap, the luxurious tan-coloured lozenges that came to her in a box each christmas and birthday, and other scents too, the yellow of oriental jasmine, the pink of tea-rose, the green of mimosa. For all of these scents he could find a correlative within the spectrum of his own experience.”

ImaginationSymbolismSurrealismFree Association
Book:Blue Rock
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“Il faut que l’homme s’évade de cette lice ridicule qu’on lui a faite: le prétendu réel actuel avec la perspective d’un réel futur qui ne vaille guère mieux. Chaque minute pleine porte en elle-même la négation de siècles d’histoire boitillante et cassée. Ceux à qui il appartient de faire virevolter ces huit flamboyants au-dessus de nous ne le pourront qu’avec de la sève pure._ Manifestes du surréalisme”

ArtPhilosophyFreedomSurrealism
Author:Andre Breton
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“The Tentacled Maws by Stewart Stafford Unhook the mind, Put honesty in dispute, From chosen blood, Comes officious brute. Tentacled things taking, Malicious, maladroit maws, In a hubris blizzard blind, Behind lupine power doors. Irradiated golden pockets, Ragged wretches starving, Dynasties sprouting weeds, Names on plaques for carving. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PoetryPovertyGreedExistentialismDystopianSurrealismSocial CommentaryAllegoryPolitical SatireCosmic Horror
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Chaos Cocktail by Stewart Stafford Herky-jerky's hanky-panky, Wakey-wakey, eggs n' bakey! Cosmic Mercury's retrograde trick, Nilsson's Brandy Alexander kick. John heard Bermuda's jingle-jangle, Storm surge in an Exorcist Triangle! Sea shanties upending Behan's hive, All stout hornets jigged and jived. Yoko's "Oh, no!" on firmer ground, Her ageing mariner didn't drown, Lonely Ringo plays bingo bongo, Paul, mugged down near the Congo. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

MusicSurrealismWhimsicalStream Of ConsciousnessBeatlesJohn LennonFunny PoemBermuda TrianglePop Culture ReferencesSea Poems
Author:Stewart Stafford
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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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“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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“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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“There was a lone poppy-head in the field that was saving its thoughts on a pile in the wood and when it had shaken its fear of motion it borrowed a sugar bowl at a small train station and dispatched this letter I am always so alone I miss your fine tentacles My skin is no longer smoked Now I belong to that order of birds who let others hatch their eggs Come I send sweetest regards”

LoveLonelinessIsolationYearningSurrealismAvant Garde
Author:Jindřich Heisler
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“Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno Park. The performance was brilliant. The soloist's technique was outstanding, the music both delicate and deep, and the pianist's heated emotions were there for all to feel. Still, even with my eyes closed, the music didn't sweep me away. A thin curtain stood between myself and pianist, and no matter how much I might try, I couldn't get to the other side. When I told Shimamoto this after the concert, she agreed. "But what was wrong with the performance?" she asked. "I thought it was wonderful." "Don't you remember?" I said. "The record we used to listen to, at the end of the second movement there was this tiny scratch you could hear. Putchi! Putchi! Somehow, without that scratch, I can't get into the music!" Shimamoto laughed. "I wouldn't exactly call that art appreciation." "This has nothing to do with art. Let a bald vulture eat that up, for all I care. I don't care what anybody says; I like that scratch!" "Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But what's this about a bald vulture? Regular vultures I know about--they eat corpses. But bald vultures?" In the train on the way home, I explained the difference in great detail.The difference in where they are born, their call, their mating periods. "The bald vulture lives by devouring art. The regular vulture lives by devouring the corpses of unknown people. They're completely different." "You're a strange one!" She laughed. And there in the train seat, ever so slightly, she moved her shoulder to touch mine. The one and only time in the past two months our bodies touched.”

LoveHumorRomanceMusicSurrealism
Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans' backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire”

LovePoetryPerfectionSurrealism
Book:Poems of André Breton: A Bilingual Anthology
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“Equally, the surrealists consider words as witnesses of life acting in a direct way in human affairs. To use words properly it was necessary to treat them with respect, for they were the intermediaries between oneself and the rest of creation. To abuse them was immediately to set oneself adrift from true being. Words need to be coaxed to reveal a little of their true nature, so as to close the breach that exists between the writer and the universe. The world is not something alien against which man is in conflict. Rather man and cosmos exist in reciprocal motion. We are not cast adrift in an alien or meaningless environment. The universe is intimate with us and, as Breton insisted, it is a cryptogram to be deciphered.”

WorldPoetryLanguageWordsSurrealismBreton
Book:Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World
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“Half asleep, he wondered whether that might not have been his happiest day ever, the last, perfect day swelling with the immensity of his secret intent, secret creation—the day before everything changed—the day before he realized, for the first time, yet with absolute finality, just how small his private immensity really was when measured against that other vast, dark, impersonal immensity, call it God, or history, or simply life.”

NovelMagical RealismSurrealism
Book:The Line
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“-You see, I have it within me still,” you said, and opened your pocket and pulled out a piece of sheet music, the black calligraphy in its careful, blocky dots making the whole thing look like paving stones on a log road. The calligraphy went on and on, and you pulled the entire song out from your skin where you’d kept it, just in case your friend wanted to see it again.”

FriendshipMusicSurrealism
Book:The Shivering Ground & Other Stories
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“Reflectorama by Stewart Stafford City buildings screaming down, Memories staggering anywhere, My childhood self calls out, But I must not go back there. Conjoined twins amputated, The pathway home lies cracked, Tsunamis smashed our thin bridge, Egregious horse, blindly backed. Forced into immovable objections, Monoliths in mutual self-defeat, Torched your bed, now burn in it, As I hotfoot it down the street. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PoetryGriefIdentityMental HealthTraumaModernismEscapismSurrealismFragmentationUrban Poetry
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“You earth, you soil, you chewing monster of human hearts in casseroles...”

DeathNatureLossAngerMourningProtestExistentialSurrealism
Book:SONG FOR YOU / CÂNTEC PENTRU TINE (Bilingual English–Romanian Edition / Ediție bilingvă engleză–română / 2025): Poems of Love, Madness & Resurrection / ... nebunie și renaștere
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“You’re better looking than me. You’re more intelligent than me. Your personality is more likable than mine. You make more money than me. Your family is nicer than mine. Your religion is better than mine. You’ve seen more beaches than me. You’ve been to more cities than me. Your automobile is nicer than mine. Your significant other is better looking than mine. Your candidate won. Your home team won. You’re number one. But life is a tie. We all die.”

PhilosophyRomanceDeathExistentialismSurrealismAbsurdism
Author:Jason Daniel Chaplin
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