Clown Quotes

“Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”
― Stephen King, It

“Everything's a lot tougher when it's for real. That's when you choke. When it's for real.”
― Stephen King, It

“The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.”
― Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

“Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me!”
― Stephen King, It

“Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns... Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You're dead!”
― James Howard Kunstler

“For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.”
― Stephen King, It

“The clown may be the source of mirth, but - who shall make the clown laugh?”
― Angela Carter , Nights at the Circus

“Console yourself knowing that, should you ever punch me while wearing it, you’ll probably take my eye out. And I’d very much like you to. Wear it, that is. Not punch me.”
“Where did you get this thing?”
“My mother gave it to me before she left. It’s the Lantsov emerald. She was wearing it at my birthday dinner the night we were attacked. Curiously enough, that was not the worst birthday I’ve had.”
“No?”
“When I was ten, my parents hired a clown.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“The clown figure has had so many meanings in different times and cultures. The jolly, well-loved joker familiar to most people is actually but one aspect of this protean creature. Madmen, hunchbacks, amputees, and other abnormals were once considered natural clowns; they were elected to fulfill a comic role which could allow others to see them as ludicrous rather than as terrible reminders of the forces of disorder in the world. But sometimes a cheerless jester was required to draw attention to this same disorder, as in the case of King Lear's morbid and honest fool, who of course was eventually hanged, and so much for his clownish wisdom. Clowns have often had ambiguous and sometimes contradictory roles to play. ("The Last Feast Of The Harlequin")”
― Thomas Ligotti, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“My paranoia wasn't always right, but just to be on the safe side, I never went to sleep with a clown in the room.”
― Mark Henwick, Hidden Trump

“Today, young girls measure the quality of their beauty based upon its entertainment value. The more people are entertained by their beauty, the more beautiful they think they must be. This is very unfortunate and I would like young girls to know that their beauty is a crown; not a clown. And crowns are best worn with elegance and serenity.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Christmas was almost four months in the rearview mirror, and there was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!”
― William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

“As I drifted along with my bodiless invisibility, I felt myself more and more becoming an empty, floating shape, seeing without being seen and walking without the interference of those grosser creatures who shared my world. It was not an experience completely without interest or even pleasure. The clown's shibboleth of "here we are again" took on a new meaning for me as I felt myself a novitiate of a more rarified order of harlequinry. ("The Last Feast Of The Harlequin")”
― Thomas Ligotti, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“He thought he saw some horses, too, and a clown, but it was the faces of all those dead raptors that really bothered him. And maybe that clown a little bit.”
― Vernon D. Burns, Gods of the Jungle Planet

“... Posai il mio cuscino sul terzo gradino dal basso, mi sedetti, presi il cappello e vi misi dentro la sigaretta: non proprio nel mezzo e non in un angolo, proprio così come se vi fosse stata gettata dall’alto e cominciai a cantare: “Il povero Papa Giovanni…”. Nessuno badava a me, non sarebbe neppure stato un bene: dopo una, due, tre ore avrebbero pur cominciato ad accorgersi di me. Interruppi la mia strofa quando udii la voce al microfono che annunciava un treno da Amburgo… Allora andai avanti. Mi spaventai quando la prima moneta cadde nel cappello: era un soldo, colpì la sigaretta, la sospinse troppo da parte. La rimisi al posto giusto e ripresi a cantare.”
― Heinrich Böll

“The laughing, joking court jester, who is in reality a Shaman, has all the respect of a king, for there has always been an element of danger lurking about beneath the surface of his smile”
― Karl Wiggins

“I've always been the clown and mischief maker of the family; I've always had to pay double for my sins: once with scoldings and then again with my own sense of despair. I'm no longer satisfied with the meaningless affection or the supposedly serious talks.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“He had no idea that people thought he was clowning. It was Fate, of course, which had costumed him--Fate, and a feeble will to survive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5: The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance With Death

“roses are red,
violets are blue.
a clown killed a boy,
and ate him up too.”
― Tim Burton, The Art of Tim Burton

“I allowed you to paint me as a fool, when all my love was true to you, and as you laughed as if I was the fool, the real joke was you.”
― Mireya Rios, Painted Love

“Some firebreathers have to use props, gasoline, all that extra stuff," explains the Ringmaster.
"But not this one. He's real. That's why I gave him the stage name Dragon.
"And the clowns? Why do they look so sad?"
"Ah, yes. Their girlfriend ran off with the strongman yesterday."
"Their girlfriend?"
"Yes, she was a contortionist. And clowns share everything.”
― Connor Garrett, Spellbound Under The Spanish Moss: A Southern Tale of Magic

“The Ballad of Philippe Petit
—for the world's greatest rope dancer

Philippe Petit hangs his high wire
in the third eye of God,
fills the dull air with blue fire,
all alone on the big city street,
Little Phillip, Philippe Petit.

Philippe Petit, high priest of daring,
feels wind pulse in his feet,
flying high on his mystical string,
between tall towers above the street.
Little Phillip, Philippe Petit.

Little Phillip by the Golden Fleece,
making Seventh Avenue sing.
He draws a magic circle of chalk,
rides his cycle around in a ring,
Little Phillip, Philippe Petit.

Little Phillip, clown gargoyle,
spewing light on the grey street,
rope dances twirling sticks of fire,
bright sparkle of the dark street,
Little Phillip, Philippe Petit.

Philippe Petit juggles fire and balls,
winks at Zeus, laughs at Mars,
pulls Newton's beard, sups with God,
cycling his way from heaven to street.
Little Phillip, Philippe Petit.

Little Phillip, when we get there,
you'll surely be on high,
juggling molecules for your maker
on the wide streets of the sky,
Little Phillip, Philippe Petit.

Philippe Petit, The King of Heaven
has a brilliant little fool
juggling fire at his footstool.
A light on the dark city street,
A light, a light, Philippe Petit.”
― Daniela Gioseffi

“Bulgakov always loved clowning and agreed with E. T. A. Hoffmann that irony and buffoonery are expressions of ‘the deepest contemplation contemplation of life in all its conditionality’.

It is not by chance that his stage adaptations of the comic masterpieces of Gogol and Cervantes coincided with the writing of The Master and Margarita. Behind such specific ‘influences’ stands the age-old tradition of folk humour with its carnivalized world-view, its reversals and dethronings, its relativizing of worldly absolutes—a tradition that was the subject of a monumental study by Bulgakov’s countryman and contemporary Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, which in its way was as much an explosion of Soviet reality as Bulgakov’s novel, appeared in 1965, a year before The Master and Margarita. The coincidence was not lost on Russian readers. Commenting on it, Bulgakov’s wife noted that, while there had never been any direct link between the two men, they were both responding to the same historical situation from the same cultural basis.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Soy un payaso en blanco y negro actuando de espaldas a un público que no hace mas que llorar.”
― Joaquin G. Gutierrez

“I would do anything just to see you smile,
but I don't have any talent to be a clown anymore.”
― Augusto Branco

“If i'm gonna be described as a clown for my actions, I might aswell be a whole circus”
― Bee_

“Comedians are known to commit suicide.”
― Steven Magee

“Clowns are made by those who made a circus out of life.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov