Music, Art and Madness Quotations and Proverbs

* some views expressed in these quotations not neccesarily endorsed by the author of this file.
* for entertainment only - history is not an exact science - dates and quotes not guaranteed for accuracy.

Added for July 2008:

The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.

Life is never quite interesting enough. You people who come to the movies know that.
  • dialog, The Matchmaker, 1958
I'd rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have anything to do with these "artistic" bitches of Paris.
  • Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954) (In a letter to Nikolas Muray, 1939)
I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
  • Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) (In Hayden Herrera's _Frida: [1983])
From time to time, I need a rest from the exercitation of my intellect.
  • Jean Stafford (1915 - 1979) _The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford_ [1969]
We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control
  • Pink Floyd, lyrics; 'Another Brick in the Wall'
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
  • Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848 - 1907)
Once, George and I had gone to see the film _The Blackboard Jungle_. It starred Vic Morrow, which was good, but more importantly it had Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" as its theme tune. The first time I heard that, shivers went up my spine, so we had to go and see the film, just for the title song.

I could just about scrape through the sixteen barrier. Even though I was baby-faced, I was just able to bluff it in the grown-up world, but George couldn't. He had all the attitude, but he really was young-looking. I remember going out into his back garden and getting a bit of soil and putting it on his lip as a moustache. It was ridiculous, but I thought "He looks the part-- we'll get in." And we did.

It was a teenage juvenile delinquent film, and we were quite disappointed, all acting and talking!

The Bill Haley era passed me by, in a way. When his records came on the wireless my mother would start dancing around. She thought they were so good. I used to hear them, but they didn't do anything for me.
  • John Lennon (1940-1980) _The Beatles Anthology_ [2000]
My real illness, it seems, is my compulsion to amuse. Apparently, you can offer to disembowel me, but I'll still see if I can make you laugh.
  • Alan Alda, _Never Have Your Dog Stuffed_
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
  • Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984) _The Little Foxes_ [1939]; Act I
I am many things. I am an animal. I am a convicted rapist, a hell-raiser, a loving father, a semi-good husband. You don't really know me.
  • Mike Tyson (1966- )
I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.
  • Charles Lamb, _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading_
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)
Music rearranges your molecular structure.
  • Carlos Santana (1947- ) In Sheila E. Anderson's _The Quotable Musician_ [2003]
If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
  • Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963) _The Perennial Philosophy_ [1946], Chapter 9
It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.
  • Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) _Literature And The Drama_ [1858]

 

 

 

 

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