Leonora Carrington Quotes

I've learned that I'm most powerful when I'm doing my art.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

A thousand suns rise from my chest.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury")

No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him.

I believe that what Genesis suggests is that this original self, with the print of God's thumb still upon it, is the most essential part of who we are and is buried deep in all of us as a source of wisdom and strength and healing which we can draw upon or, with our terrible freedom, not draw upon as we choose. I think that among other things all real art comes from that deepest self - painting, writing music, dance, all of it that in some way nourishes the spirit.

We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again. We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land.

Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion.

Whether dualistic, qualified monistic, or monistic, they all firmly believe that everything is in the soul itself; it has only to come out and manifest itself. Therefore, this shraddha is what I want, and what all of us here want, this faith in ourselves, and before you is the great task to get that faith. Give up the awful disease that is creeping, into our national blood, that idea of ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up. Be strong and have this shraddha, and everything else is bound to follow.

If someone strikes my heart, it does not break, but it bursts, and the flame coming out of it becomes a torch on my path.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.

Release for constructive purposes the power you already have, and more will come. Move on your path with unflinching determination, using all the attributes of success. Tune yourself with the creative power of spirit.

There are two kinds of power. One is power over, which is always destructive, and the other is power from within, which is a transcendent and creative power.

The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.

Roar, lion of the heart, and tear me open!

In my mind I'ma fighter, my heart's a lighter, my soul is the fluid. My flow sparks it right up.

FAITH is the element, the “chemical” which, when mixed with prayer, gives one direct communication with Infinite Intelligence.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you

Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet.

All beneficent and creative power gathers itself together in silence, ere it issues out in might.

To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze.

My desire is to stand by the fire that burns inside of you.

It takes waking prayer and working prayer and going to bed in prayer each day with increasing dedication. I must be the best person that I am able to be when I am painting. Tonight the wind is howling and the barrels are full of sky water.