Top 100 A Circus Quotes
#1. What's this?" he inquired, none too pleasantly. "A circus?"
"No, Julius. It's the end of the circus."
"I see. And these are the clowns?"
Foaly's head poked through the doorway.
"Pardon me for interrupting your extended circus metaphor, but what the hell is that?
Eoin Colfer
#2. It's weird: making a movie is like life compacted into three months. You have these very intense relationships with people, and you talk to them every day - your editor, the casting people, music people, your actors - then it ends. It's like a circus life.
Dito Montiel
#3. Unless you have a life of great importance, regrets are stupid, crumpled-up tickets to a circus that has already left town.
Lorrie Moore
#4. This isn't a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It's a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it's printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.
Chila Woychik
#5. Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside.
Ernst Lubitsch
#6. In a world full of lions and tigers entertaining the masses, have you ever seen a wolf performing in a circus?
Akilnathan Logeswaran
#7. If you surround yourself with clowns, don't be surprised when your life resembles a circus.
Steve Maraboli
#8. Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
E.B. White
#10. Life is a circus ring, with some moments more spectacular than others.
Janusz Korczak
#11. We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
Charles Bukowski
#12. As a child I went to a circus. They had a man shot out of a cannon into a net. I became intrigued with what was going on.
Wally Schirra
#13. I don't want to end up being a circus act, doing my most famous tricks when I'm 70.
Pharrell Williams
#14. The tarps Ken Weinrich's crew used has yellow and royal blue stripes, not unlike those for a circus, and this had lent a festive yet undignified mood to the proceedings.
Curtis Sittenfeld
#15. Being an actor is well paid, but it's a bit like being a circus traveler.
Ben Chaplin
#16. Why did he warn me about a circus? Isn't it supposed to be a fun place? Unless you meet the clown, of course.
Cameron Jace
#17. I went camping and borrowed a circus tent by mistake. I didn't notice until I got it set up. People complained because they couldn't see the lake.
Steven Wright
#18. God help us! We have turned the holy fire of God into a circus sideshow - and naive Christians are buying this without realizing that such shenanigans are actually blasphemous.21
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#19. Marriage is a good deal like a circus: there is not as much in it as is represented in the advertising.
E.W. Howe
#20. I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film.
Mary Ellen Mark
#21. Maybe there's just sexuality, and it's bendable and unpredictable, like a circus performer ( ... )
David Levithan
#22. Pulling his attention away from the bottom lip he still found fascinating, Oliver felt his lips twitch. "You really were in a circus?"
"With everything I've just disclosed to you, you're most interested in the idea I was once in a circus?
Jen Turano
#23. Blind with love, my daughter
has cried nightly for horses,
those long-necked marchers and churners
that she has mastered, any and all,
reigning them in like a circus hand ...
Anne Sexton
#24. If I wanted a circus ringmaster, I'd hire Trump. If I wanted advice on brain surgery or hospital management, I'd turn to Carson. Fiorina would make an articulate television pundit. But for president?
Nicholas Kristof
#25. Where are they going to get a camera? I asked. I don't know, said Noehmi. They'll probably get sidetracked along the way. Or they'll come back with paint instead, or beer, or some new idea for a circus or something. They're social anarchists.
Miriam Toews
#26. Souls dance undressed/ together/ and like loiterers/ on the fringes of a fair/ we ogle the unobtainable/ imagined mystery/ Yet away around on the far side/ like a stage door of a circus tent/ is a wide vent in the battlements/ where even elephants/ waltz thru
pg. 31// A Coney Island of the Mind
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#27. Pittsburgh felt like the perfect size of a city to me. There's enough to do, but it's not like living in a circus. I also really loved how sports-enthusiastic Pittsburgh people are: how proud of their sports they are.
Joel Edgerton
#28. I'm a street photographer, but I'm interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there's something very romantic about a circus.
Mary Ellen Mark
#30. Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
Ben Hecht
#31. Life is a circus: you go in, bow, run around, bow again and leave.
Storm Petersen
#32. Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape, Fire said, a sideshow is a confrontation.
Chris Abani
#33. You just can't imagine the kind of guy he was without seeing him play. He was a circus, a play, a movie, all rolled into one.
Lefty Gomez
#34. But the soul of touring and the heart of it is basically every day is like putting up a circus tent.
Pat Benatar
#35. I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it's like a circus in my head.
Steven Wright
#36. But for the use of physical punishment by, and fear of their oppressors, animals would never be a part of a circus.
Richard Pryor
#37. And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
John Steinbeck
#38. Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.
Naguib Mahfouz
#39. It seems so absurd to get really mad with a cartoonist over a comic strip. It's sort of like getting in a fight with a circus clown outside your house. It's not going to end well.
Stephan Pastis
#40. I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.
Annie Dillard
#41. Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out any quicker than the Christmas spirit.
Kin Hubbard
#42. New York was something like a circus performer walking a tightrope an juggling at the same time ... It could barely maintain its position, but an movement would tip the whole balance.
John Lindsay
#43. When I was a child, going to a circus with wild animal acts was a rite of passage. These days, it's an act of complicit cruelty.
K.A. Applegate
#44. I've been very fortunate. I've been in theater, films, television, radio, tragedy, comedy, farce - I've been in a musical and in music halls, in pantomime. I was once ringmaster in a circus.
Donald Sinden
#45. Punk became a circus didn't it? Everybody got it wrong. The message was supposed to be: Don't follow us, do what you want!
John Lydon
#46. He was close to Reacher's own height and weight, but slack and swollen, in a shirt as big as a circus tent, above a belt buckled improbably low, under a belly the size of a kettle drum. His face was pale, and his hair was colorless.
Lee Child
#47. We came here for a quiet, small, informal meeting - strictly business. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants and there's no two ways about it.
Robert A. Heinlein
#48. We advanced on the enemy with all the stealth of a circus.
Robert Leckie
#49. I was driving pretty much the way everyone drives in LA, like elephants dancing on each others' backs at a circus.
Gary Reilly
#50. I'm very bad at packing. It ends up being a circus, throwing everything in there. You never want to come up short.
Drew Storen
#51. Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, give him some horns and he can be a Circus Seal act
Josh Stern
#52. I remember I had a boyfriend a long time ago who said, 'You need to change your name; you sound like a circus performer.'
Lucy Punch
#53. I have no complaints about my path and the places it has taken me; enough complaints to fill a circus tent about other things, maybe, but the path I've chosen has always been the right one, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Nicholas Sparks
#54. All the world's a circus. Sometimes you choose your act and sometimes it's assigned to you.
Mia Sheridan
#55. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants.
Neil Gaiman
#56. So we see Edward as a young man on the road and he meets a giant and he brings the giant to a circus where he meets a Miss Calloway. He sees the woman of his dreams and I am the only one who knows who she is.
Danny DeVito
#57. I thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.
Erin Morgenstern
#59. When I was younger, I wanted to own a circus and create this bizarre revue that went from town to town. I suppose, in a way, I got my wish because when you're working on a film, you're in a traveling circus.
Neil Burger
#60. The States are great. I'd like to go just to see life, see things and hear people talk. It's like a circus where different acts go on at the same time.
Jim Capaldi
#61. You love the way it makes me feel when I can't catch my breath Like walkin' on a high wire, Lord, it scares me half to death You're always high above me and I'm always fallin' down Our loves just a circus baby, and I'm just the clown
Conway Twitty
#62. At least a circus performance does not last long, and the regime availing itself of the services of clownish journalists has the longevity of a mouldering mushroom.
Anna Politkovskaya
#63. You are a circus act all of your own and I cannot help but be your audience.
Cecelia Ahern
#64. You with your veins full of night - you have no more place among men than an epitaph in the middle of a circus.
Emil M. Cioran
#65. The Them hesitated. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants. They left.
Terry Pratchett
#66. I grew up on movie sets, I'm comfortable on sets. A movie set is like a circus. I don't understand why moviemaking has to be such an insane environment.
Jason Reitman
#67. Sometimes I think God wants there to be a circus so we can show there's another way to respond.
Tony Dungy
#68. He saw that it wasn't just a circus, but an arena, just like everywhere.
Henry Miller
#69. Presidential primary debates are an important part of our political process. But the media has wrested complete control from the parties and candidates over everything, including the number, the format, the qualifications, and the moderators. And they've become a circus.
Mark McKinnon
#70. I felt as if I'd been spun around fifty times then released into the middle of a circus and told to have fun.
Rick Riordan
#71. This is the marketplace of political ideas. This is how America operates. It's a free market. It's free-wheeling. From the outside, it looks unpredictable. There's a circus-like free market.
Jon Huntsman Jr.
#72. A man's body is like a circus. You can swing off his trapeze arms, lay your head on thighs like fresh-blown balloons while his cock performs tricks, soft to hard, a burst like a cannon if you treat him right.
Bojan Veljanov
#73. A circus of stars,
your dreams a trapeze, faces
lift like mirrored moons.
Imtiaz Dharker
#74. If poetry is a circus, then the Big Tent we're under has to have room for a lot of different freak shows.
Alan DeNiro
#75. A circus here, a circus there; here today, gone tomorrow. Big Brother watching you. Fear eats the soul.
David Peace
#76. If you were to ask me, 'What the hell does a musician have in common with a restaurant?' I would say a huge amount. It's show time every day, it's a team of people, like, running a circus, which is running a rock-and-roll band.
Mick Fleetwood
#77. I don't get to do a lot of fight scenes on 'Sanctuary,' but I'm a trained fighter; I've been doing martial arts for years and, you know, I'm very active physically; I used to be a circus performer.
Ryan Robbins
#78. I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness ...
Jean Rhys
#79. Do I have to thank Colleen again? God, I'm so sick of thanking Colleen. Shit, she's so great, you know? Thank you, Colleen. You've made a circus out of our friendship. Filthy Muggle.
Tarryn Fisher
#80. I think if you're able to make the music you want and you can do it in the right kind of context, you don't have to be a circus ringleader to be successful.
James Iha
#81. When people do something extraordinarily well, it's self-evident. It could be art. It could be a circus, whatever it is, where people are doing incredible things. It's self-evident. You know that it's beautiful. You know that it's very difficult, but it looks easy.
Gabe Polsky
#82. Oh my God. I just got dumped by a red headed mortician in a funeral home named Crummy's, after pretending to be a circus freak at a visitation I had just crashed. I was pretty sure there'd be no bouncing back from this. -Dakota Bombay
Leslie Langtry
#83. My progression into acting was pretty slow. I was constantly performing in different kinds of small shows. One year I would be in a magic show, the next year in a circus show, then a small play, and then a dance show.
Roberto Aguire
#84. Personally, nothing would surprise me any more. If my father announced that he was really a Russian agent or my mother ran away with a circus knife thrower, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow.
Sue Townsend
#85. I reckon if I ever marry, she will have to be a strong woman in a circus or something.
Robert E. Howard
#86. His lap looked like it was already occupied
by a giant boner. It pressed against his pants like a circus tent pole. Elephants could fit under there. A lion tamer and some flying trapeze artists. A dancing bear, or five.
Juniper Bell
#87. Living as an actor is rather like living life on the trapezes in a circus. Every time you jump on, you have to pray that, when the time comes for you to jump off, there is another trapeze swinging your way.
Celia Imrie
#89. When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
Edward R. Murrow
#90. Why do we refer to the mind as a circus? A circus is not a mess; a circus is a very coordinated activity deliberately made to look like a mess. On one level it is a mess, but on another, it is a highly coordinated activity.
Jaggi Vasudev
#91. Sometimes the manager must perform with the courage and agility of a circus performer, carefully crossing the highwire between short-term problems and long-term objectives.
Buck Rodgers
#92. I can hardly conceive of any educated man believing in God at all without believing that God contains in Himself every perfection including eternal joy; and does not require the solar system to entertain Him like a circus.
G.K. Chesterton
#93. There are always those 'Gossip Girl' walk-and-talk scenes where you're walking and just talking about life and death. You're having a serious conversation, looking someone in the eye, but everywhere around you, it's literally a circus.
Chace Crawford
#94. We came here for a small, informal meeting. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants.
Robert A. Heinlein
#95. I took the Nuban's bow. I didn't trust the midget to be able to run down any thieves, and besides, I might want to shoot a circus clown or two. Just for laughs.
Mark Lawrence
#96. She feels like a circus clown who wakes up one morning and no longer wants to glue on the red rubber nose.
Christina Baker Kline
#97. I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one.
Vincent Cassel
#98. When I was little, one of my father's friends owned a circus. For four absolutely incredible summers, I found myself being the only boy in Ireland who didn't dream of running away with the circus. I was in it!
Ian Beattie
#99. There is a circus around politics. But if you think it is a game, then you forget what the purpose of politics actually is.
Johann Lamont
#100. A circus! 100 clowns of injustice have climbed out of the tiny clown car of this court room.
Ellen DeGeneres
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