Quotes from Nights at the Circus

“The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. And, each day, takes less and less nourishment, as if grudging the least moment of wakefulness, for, from the movement under her eyelids, and the somnolent gestures of her hands and feet, it seems as if her dreams grow more urgent and intense, as if the life she lives in the closed world of dreams is now about to possess her utterly, as if her small, increasingly reluctant wakenings were an interpretation of some more vital existence, so she is loath to spend even those necessary moments of wakefulness with us, wakings strange as her sleepings. Her marvellous fate - a sleep more lifelike than the living, a dream which consumes the world.
'And, sir,' concluded Fevvers, in a voice that now took on the sombre, majestic tones of a great organ, 'we do believe . . . her dream will be the coming century.
'And, oh, God . . . how frequently she weeps!”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“The clown may be the source of mirth, but - who shall make the clown laugh?”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“And from the coffin of your madness there is no escape.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched. Horrors! And, as on a cyclorama, this unnatural spectacle rolls past at twenty-odd miles an hour in a tidy frame of lace curtains only a little the worse for soot and drapes of a heavy velvet of dark, dusty blue.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Despair is the constant companion of the clown.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“...in their millenial and long-lived patience they knew quite well how, in a hundred years, or a thousand years' time, or else, perhaps, tomorrow, in an hour's time, for it was all a gamble, a million to one chance, but all the same there was a chance that if they kept on shaking their chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles would part.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“...for nothing is more boring than being forced to play.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“She was feeling supernatural tonight. She wanted to EAT diamonds.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“And it was sad music fit to make you cut your throat.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest?”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment!”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Sometimes it seems' said Grok, 'that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the clown who will wear them, who will bring them to life. Faces that wait in the mirrors of unknown dressing-rooms, unseen in the depths of the glass like fish in dusty pools, fish that will rise up out of the obscure profundity when they spot the one who anxiously scrutinises his own reflection for the face it lacks, man eating fish waiting to gobble up your being and give you another instead...”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“all white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be seen or touched”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Have you ever stared stark failure in the face, young man? The trick is, to outstare it!”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Wherein does a woman’s honour reside, old chap? In her vagina or in her spirit?”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“The harder the bargain men must strike with nature to survive, the more rules they're likely to have amongst themselves too keep them all in order”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Herşeye karşın onun kişiliğinde hâlâ eksik kalmış birşeyler vardı. Mobilyalı olarak kiraya verilmiş bir eve benziyordu. [sf 11]”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“...is it not to the mercies of the eyes of others that we commit ourselves on our journey through the world?”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Those were her best days, although there was always something feckless about her, something so slack and almost fearful in her too frequent smile, so that when you saw Mignon being happy, you always thought: "It can't last." She had the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet she existed thus, without memory or history, only because her past was too bleak to think of and her future too terrible to contemplate; she was the broken blossom of the present tense.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“At this time, the cusp of the modern age, the hinge of the nineteenth century, had a plebiscite been taken amongst all the inhabitants of the world, by far the great number of them, occupied as they were throughout the planet with daily business of agriculture of the slash and burn variety, warfare, metaphysics and procreation, would have heartily concurred with these indigenous Siberians that the whole idea of the twentieth century, or any other century at all, for that matter, was a rum notion. Had the global plebiscite been acted upon in a democratic manner, the twentieth century would have forthwith ceased to exist, the entire system of dividing up years by one hundred would have been abandoned and time, by popular consent, would have stood still.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Bu tatlı seste sanki tekinsiz olan bir şey varmış, ya bu sesin sahibi büyücüymüş ya da bir büyünün etkisindeymiş gibi geldi odadakilere. Üçü de tüylerinin diken diken olduğunu hissettiler. [sf 184]”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“Palyaço maskesinin altında yatan o yüz, uzun yıllar önce tanışıp sevilmiş, sonra da kaybedilmiş, şimdi de yeniden bulunmuş bir sevgilinin yüzü. Onunla daha önce hç karşılaşmamış olmama, bana tümüyle yabancı bir yüz olmasına karşın, görüp tanımamdan bile önce vurgun olduğum bir yüz bu. [sf 288]”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs!”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

“From beggar to thief is one step, but a step in two directions at the same time, for what a beggar loses in morality when he becomes a thief he regains in self-respect.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus

About the author

Popular quotes

“Science’s skeptical core makes it a poor competitor for human hearts and minds, which recoil from its ongoing controversies and prefer the security of seemingly eternal truths. If the scientific approach were just one more interpretation of the cosmos, it would never have amounted to much; but science’s big-time success rests on the fact that it works. If you board an aircraft built according to science – with principles that have survived numerous attempts to prove them wrong – you have a far better chance of reaching your destination than you do in an aircraft constructed by the rules of Vedic astrology.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
― Walt Whitman, quote from Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition

“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a came of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Other Stories

“I couldn't help thinking how good I'd had it, until now - the fact that love had always been a pleasure and never a pain. I had never been forced, nor had I ever had to force myself. Everything had been good the way it was.”
― quote from A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

“Love token? So far you've given me a farthing charm and a book of manners I don't need. No wonder you idiots need a tournament to get married." Tress”
― Megan Derr, quote from Tournament of Losers

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.