Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939
On Moore’s Life of Lord Byron (1830)
“I see everything in a grotesque way.”
From an interview given in 1894, as quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 220
Context: I see everything in a grotesque way. When I go to the theatre, for example, things shape themselves before my eyes just as a I draw them — the people on the stage, the footlights, the queer faces and garb of the audience in the boxes and stalls. They all seem weird and strange to me. Things have always impressed me in this way.
Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 9 “A Curious Tale for Countess Amberglass” section 1 (p. 435)
“…when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 127
Source: Water for Elephants
“There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 136
Ch. 2 (tr. Burton Watson, 1964, p. 41)
Context: Whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsi-shih, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories], but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. He relies upon this alone, relies upon it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the Way.
