“The human foot is commonly subjected to grotesque tortures that deform it and make it rickety. In an imbecilic way it is doomed to corns, calluses, and bunions.”

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)

Of Deformity
Essays (1625)

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 127

[cvo12q$oii$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Source: Water for Elephants

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 136

Source: Knowledge of Hell (2008), p. 145

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.