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Surrealism Quotes

“The Roller Trip by Stewart Stafford A psychedelic Rolls-Royce ride, Lennons and pals giggle inside, Chauffeur whistles as secrets slip, Hourglass liquid lets sentience rip. Supplied narcotics set minds ablaze, Looping the loop in a magenta haze: "Ladies & Germs, to a scene obscene! Set sail to ecstasy we've never seen!" Wheels whirled wild in a swirling blur, Yokels mouth breathe where cows concur, Red light flare, fans storm captive glass, Mary Jane and Lucy on laughing gas. Below the speed limit, warp speed fast, Canary oil slides on a ghost ship's mast, Paisley spermatozoa in jigging fright, Tumbling back to earth as day flipped night. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

HumorHumourDrugs1960sPsychedelicSurrealismWordplayTripJohn LennonThe Beatles
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Space Boot Hill: The Urbane Frontier by Stewart Stafford Red hot, white hot, then what? Nostril fleas dancing at dawn, Creating Frankenstein rivals, Great Whites slumming as prawn. Melon farmers of the world unite! We like them big, ripe and juicy, See all the Vegans next Tuesday: Barbara, Doris, Amy and Lucy. And so we dodge the cosmic bullets, Of an Atraxis gunslinger, non-ritual dead, Playing possum, we slip away, Chiming life's aria, eternally spread. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

HumorSpaceHumourScience FictionWesternExistentialismSatireSurrealismSocial CommentaryAbsurdism
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Anaesthetic Aesthetic by Stewart Stafford Crumbs infesting my bedsheets, Sleeping sand in all the cracks, As a hijack tick on a giant horse, Awakened by deadening thudding. Body falling down the elevator shaft, Can you stop that instantly, friend? I cannot focus on all my work here, You should have water to cannonball. And another stiff just fell down that, Cool, go ahead if you have to leap, You won't see me cleaning that mess, Shattered carcasses, basement floor. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

HumorHumourSurrealSurrealismBodiesHumorous SituationsMonty PythonJohn CleeseSurreal HumorSurreal Humour
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.”

Science FictionPataphysicsSurrealismSpeculative FictionCognitive ScienceAuditoryWeird FictionSurrealisticOlfactorySensory ProcessingStimuliMole FliesPuppet Dictator
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“Princess Cookie’s cognitive pathways may have required a more comprehensive analysis. He knew that it was possible to employ certain progressive methods of neural interface, but he felt somewhat apprehensive about implementing them, for fear of the risks involved and of the limited returns such tactics might yield. For instance, it would be a particularly wasteful endeavor if, for the sake of exhausting every last option available, he were even to go so far as resorting to invasive Ontological Neurospelunkery, for this unorthodox process would only prove to be the cerebral equivalent of tracking a creature one was not even sure existed: surely one could happen upon some new species deep in the caverns somewhere and assume it to be the goal of one’s trek, but then there was a certain idiocy to this notion, as one would never be sure this newfound entity should prove to be what one wished it to be; taken further, this very need to find something, to begin with, would only lead one to clamber more deeply inward along rigorous paths and over unsteady terrain, the entirety of which could only be traversed with the arrogant resolve of someone who has already determined, with a misplaced sense of pride in his own assumptions, that he was undoubtedly making headway in a direction worthwhile. And assuming still that this process was the only viable option available, and further assuming that Morell could manage to find a way to track down the beast lingering ostensibly inside of Princess Cookie, what was he then to do with it? Exorcise the thing? Reason with it? Negotiate maybe? How? Could one hope to impose terms and conditions upon the behavior of something tracked and captured in the wilds of the intellect? The thought was a bizarre one and the prospect of achieving success with it unlikely. Perhaps, it would be enough to track the beast, but also to let it live according to its own inclinations inside of her. This would seem a more agreeable proposition. Unfortunately, however, the possibility still remained that there was no beast at all, but that the aberration plaguing her consciousness was merely a side effect of some divine, yet misunderstood purpose with which she had been imbued by the Almighty Lord Himself. She could very well have been functioning on a spiritual plane far beyond Morell’s ability to grasp, which, of course, seared any scrutiny leveled against her with the indelible brand of blasphemy. To say the least, the fear of Godly reprisal which this brand was sure to summon up only served to make the prospect of engaging in such measures as invasive Ontological Neurospelunkery seem both risky and wasteful. And thus, it was a nonstarter.”

ConsciousnessPataphysicsFairy TalesSurrealismBlasphemyAberrationBlack HumorExorcismAbsurdismMetafictionNeuroscience Of Free WillOntological NeurospelunkeryEcumenical PsychofragmentismSpiritual PlaneWilds Of The Intellect
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“The Penultimate Hotel by Stewart Stafford Enter sluggishly into the lobby, A banquet is in progress in the restaurant, They’re regurgitating reality from within, And then eating their young. An apocalyptic porter has radioactive cubes in the lift, Housekeeping will have ten thousand years of light, But the sheets in the rooms, Will all turn to cream cheese. The cooks in the kitchen are breaking bones and rules, Creating a cake that stretches to infinity, Babel babble with protesting eggs, All baked in a hellfire oven. The concierge gives out tips, And tells guests they are awful and to leave, While simultaneously tattooing diabolical potion recipes, Inside a willing bellhop’s eyelids. © 2021, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

HotelGothicDark HumorSurrealismWhimsicalDark HumourBritish HumourBlack ComedyBritish HumorFawlty Towers
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Slowly, however, her lips curled again, her jaw locking open, baring her teeth with too much gum in a wrenching scream. The bloodcurdling sound ringing through his ears while her nails clawed at her chest, hands violently digging through the soft connective tissue and tearing it to ribbons, blood gushed thick and black over the pink of her dress, painting it red. It was then that Henry saw that there was something terrible inside her, attempting to break its way out. It shattered the marrow of her ribs and slithered from her belly, melting away from her, into a grotesque creature with razor-sharp canines and claws drenched in blood. Her screaming becoming louder, Henry was sure his eardrums were about to burst, and he was caught in a state of paralysis, stuck watching her tear herself apart until all that was left of her was this monstrosity.”

HorrorSelf DestructionSurrealismGirlhoodMonstrosityFeminist HorrorMonstrous FeminineSurrealist Horror
Book:Blossom
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“Bizzaro Time by Stewart Stafford I took dawn selfies on a bridge, Geneva worms conferred in slime, A woman's dog slithered serpentine, It snapped and hissed in bizarro time. A businessman's briefcase in flight, Went public in a philanthropist sky, Umbrellas blossomed into trees, Peacenik pigeon medal caught the eye. Coffee shops served liquid light, Brewed up pagan code of yore, Pedestrians' morphed molten form, Glass-blown in tangerine pour. We shared loop shrugs, muted pleas, Sober intoxication's escapist twist, A uniquely-marketed Tuesday morn, Dreamt up to commodify every tryst. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

TechnologyAuthenticitySatireDystopianSurrealismSocial CommentaryAbsurdismCommodificationSocial Commentary HumorSocial Commentary Satire
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“That's what dreams are really like, you know? They're not full of melting clocks or floating roses or people made out of rocks. Most of the time, dreams look just like the normal world. It's your feelings that tell you something's off. Not your mind, not your intellect, not something as obvious as that. The only part of you that really knows what's going on is the part of you that's most a mystery. If that's not Surrealism, I don't know what is.”

ArtDreamsArtistsSurrealismIsabelleMagritteDali
Book:Crazy
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“Bosch was not possessed by a deranged spirit but the possessor of a cool, calculating mind. His supreme mastery of the arts is proved by his ability to paint cerebrally constructed devils, of which the component parts each has its own meaning. This, in short, is genius, and modern art historians who see Bosch as a surrealist have been led astray by it. Bosch had a keen eye for the demonic element in what he observed (e.g. in colours and human faces) and he understood and knew exactly how to make use of it and achieve the desired effects.”

ArtPaintingSurrealismDreamworkBoschRennaissanceHeironymous Bosch
Book:Hieronymus Bosch: His picture-writing deciphered
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“Hallucination Country by Stewart Stafford A furious tribe of leaves, Chased a logging truck, As forked flames waved, From a burning backyard tree. A half-eaten unicorn in a ditch, A warning from hunters nearby, Slaughtering fairytale creatures, Cryptids were their mint targets. An abandoned Volkswagen car lay, Half-overturned, underbelly exposed, The injured driver, now hitchhiking, With a spree killer or tow-truck driver. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

HuntingSurrealSurrealismUnicornCar AccidentDeforestationHitchhikingSurreal PoetrySurreal HumorSurreal Humour
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves. Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.' Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.”

InspirationalHumorScienceEducationKnowledgeTeacherPerceptionLibraryUniversitySurrealismAcademiaPastoral CareTeleologyLie To Children
Book:The Science of Discworld
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“Gregor’s serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month - the apple remained imbedded in his flesh as a visible souvenir since no one dared to remove it - seemed to have reminded even his father that Gregor was a member of the family, in spite of his present pathetic and repulsive shape, who could not be treated as an enemy; that, on the contrary, it was the commandment of the family duty to swallow their disgust and endure him, endure him and nothing more.”

SurrealSurrealismKafkaesque
Book:The Metamorphosis
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“The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.”

PataphysicsSurrealismConjectureAbsurdismPhysiognomyVeilWeird FictionMetafictionSurreal QuotesDisproportionateProsthesisRemedial SpaceMacromoleculesStealth Surrealism
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“Knowhere by Stewart Stafford Poleaxed by vampiric tapping— rattling timeline of a loop lapping— Hypochondriac paranoid toothache, tasting everything I see and break. Showed my tongue to an undertaker; licked his face — proved I’m no faker. A measured, grim diagnosis followed, matter from a cardiac pump hollowed. Draped loosely in a tea towel shroud, resurrected—naked, loud, and proud— Rocket to the pub for a post-wake baptism, a ploughman’s lunch with relish schism. © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PoetryExistentialismSatireDark HumorSurrealismContemporary PoetryAbsurdismGothic PoetryHorror PoetryBritish Humor
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Tell us a weird idea you've come up with that's totally out there.' 'Well,' said the author, 'I made George Formby president-for-life of Great Britain.' 'Who's George Formby?' asked Tiger. 'What's Great Britain? asked Boo. 'Okay,' he said, 'here's another: a book about Humpty Dumpty as a police procedural.' 'I think that's been done', said the Troll. 'Everyone's always retelling nursery rhymes. I mean, it's not a massive stretch, is it?' 'How about a social order based wholly on the strength of your colour vision?' 'Better,' I said. 'is there a sequel?' 'Don't you start.”

HumourSelf AwarenessSurrealismHumourousSelf Deprecating
Book:The Great Troll War
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