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

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Popular quotes

“Tu ne souhaites pas réellement sa mort ai je pensé en m'étirant sur le siège arrière. Car si elle meurt tu perds tout espoir de la tuer de tes propres mains. Et ça ce serait vraiment dommage.”
― Lauren Weisberger, quote from The Devil Wears Prada

“First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.

I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.

But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.

“Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”
“And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?”
“Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”
“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”
“They are her sons and daughters.”
“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”
“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”
“Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?”
“No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”
“And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.”
“They are her beasts.”
“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”
“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”
I looked at my Teacher in amazement.
“Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Great Divorce

“I want to take her into my arms and hold her tight. But at the same time, I know that is the exact opposite of what she wants. She wants to be free, and all I want is to hold her tight against me. ~ Elder”
― Beth Revis, quote from Across the Universe

“Uff. Este era uno de esos momentos realmente maduros y raros en mi vida.
Mierda. ¿Dónde estaba Aiden para ver esto?”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, quote from Half-Blood

“Consider me your candy stripper... I mean striper.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from Rules of Attraction

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