Talk:Salvador Dalí

Re the madman quote: I seem to remember seeing a documentary called The Essential Dali or something, where he said something like that. But it was more like, "The difference between Dali and the crazy man is that Dali, is not, crazy!". He spoke in English in the third person, with that weird inflection. Maybe he said the quote as it's given on the page, too, but I thought I'd bring it up. -- Merphant

"Le", oui or non?

It seems a bit weird the way le is used throughout when all the rest is in English. Is that the way it's supposed to be? Is that the way he spoke? --bodnotbod 08:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if it is the way he spoke, but he spoke Catalan, not French. So he wouldn't say either oui or non. – 128.151.92.148 08:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Problems

It seems like there are some problems here

• "In le subconscious you fuck ugly people, never beautiful, because la libido always desires something repulsive."
• "I like it, le murder, because this is courage. It is anti-bourgeois. Le murder is closer to heaven, because after becoming rrrremords de conscience, one prays, one opens le sky, and le angels say, “Good morning!”"

--Dannycas 00:50, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Duplicates

The following quotation appears, in various forms, three times on this page: "Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali." Do we really need all three variations? -- (The writer known on EN as llywrch) 01:08, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Mexico Quote

"No volveré a venir a un pais que es mas surrealista que mis pinturas" translated: "I will not go again to a country that is even more surreal than my paintings" This due to the stability and political image of Mexico.

Im sorry to contradict the author of this translation but Dali said this because of the vast difference between the old world and the new world. For instance, the plants that are found in the southwestern US and Mexico (cacti and other) are something not found in Europe and would seem surrealistic for anyone who's never laid eyes on their landscape. Add to this the people, and culture. I have included some pictures found in Commons to try to convey what I am saying. And as there is no form to proof that what I am saying is what Dali really meant, there is no form to proof that what this translator has written is correct. Therfore I will not add anything different but will simply delete this part: This due to the stability and political image of Mexico.

--Mannypr 04:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Salvador Dalí.

• No volveré a venir a un pais que es más surrealista que mis pinturas.
  • I will not return to a country that is more surrealistic than my paintings.
  • Said after visiting Mexico

• El problema de la juventud de hoy es que uno ya no forma parte de ella.
  • The problem with today's youth is not being a part of it anymore.

• Muchas personas no cumplen los ochenta porque intentan durante demasiado tiempo quedarse en los cuarenta.
  • Many people do not reach their eighties because they try to stay in their forties too long.

• Picasso es pintor, yo también; Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
  • Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.

• Pintar un cuadro es o muy sencillo o imposible.
  • To paint a picture is either very simple or impossible.

• A los tres años quería ser cocinero. A los cinco quería ser Napoleón. Mi ambición no ha hecho más que crecer ahora sólo quiero ser Salvador Dalí y nada más. Por otra parte, esto es muy difícil, ya que, a medida que me acerco a Salvador Dalí, él se aleja de mí
  • When I was three years old, I wanted to be a cook. When I was five, I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambition has done nothing but grown, and now I only want to be Salvador Dalí and nothing more. On the other hand, this is very difficult, now that, as I approach Salvador Dalí, he gets farther away.

• I love Gala so much, if she dies I will eat her.he was the best artist in the world.

• I do not take drugs. I am drugs.

• In the pretext of the academic being detestable, the worst in the class was made a hero! He opens the door to the ethics of shit! Newness at whatever cost and art becomes just a latrine!

• I tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous juggler Federico Garcia Lorca [the Spanish Surrealist poet]. It was very painful.

• Have no fear of perfection. You will never reach it.

• The difference between Dalí and the crazy man is that Dalí, is not crazy!
  • Variant: The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
  • Alternatively: The difference between me and a madman is the madman thinks that he is sane. I know that I am mad. (as on the wall of the Dalí universe exhibition, london, 2006)

• What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

• Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic.

• You have the lips of the pharmacist of Figueres (telling to Mae West and speaking about the pharmacist and philosopher of the history Alexandre Deulofeu).

• I believe in general in death but in the death of Dali absolutely not. I believe in my death becoming very -- almost impossible.

Quotes from The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (Dali, 1942, Trans. Haakon Chevalier)

I'm just dropping some quotes here as I read through the book. At a later date, I will go through and judge if any are worthy of inclusion on the main-namespace page. 142.25.33.124 03:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

P1: "At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

P4: "One single being has reached a plane of life whose image is comparable to the serene perfections of the Renaissance, and this being happens to be precisely Gala, my wife, whom I had the miracle to choose. She is composed of those fleeting attitudes, of those Ninth-Symphony-like facial expressions, which, reflecting the architectonic contours of a perfect soul, become crystallized on the very shore line of the flesh, at the skin's surface, in the sea foam of the hierarchies of her own life, and which, having been classified, clarified by the most delicate breezes of the sentiments, harden, are organized, and become architecture in flesh and bone. And for this reason I can say of Gala seated that she resembles perfectly, that she is posed with the same grace as, Il Tempietto di Bramante near the church of San Pietro in Montorio at Rome; for, like Stendhal in the Vatican, I too can measure exactly the slim columns of her pride, the tender and stubborn banisters of her childhood, the divine stairways of her smile."

P6: "One thing, at least, is certain: everything, absolutely everything, that I shall say here is entirely and exclusively my own fault."

To add more later....

P7: "Fortunately I am not one of those beings who when they smile are apt to expose remnants, however small, of horrible and degrading spinach clinging to their teeth. This is not because I brush my teeth better than others; it is due to the much more categorical fact that I do not eat spinach. It so happens that I attach to spinach, as to everything more or less directly pertaining to food, essential values of a moral and esthetic order. And of course the sentinel of disgust is ever on hand, vigilant and full of severe solicitude, ceremoniously attentive to the exacting choice of my foods." (I like to eat only things with well-defined shapes that the intelligence can grasp. I detest spinach because of its utterly amorphous character, so much that I am firmly convinced, and do not hesitate for a moment to maintain, that the only good, noble and edible thing to be found in that sordid nourishment is the sand.)

Damn. This whole work is wholly brilliant. I do not think I can be trusted to the process of picking terse and appropriate quotes, as I seem to want to transcribe the whole body of the work....