“
Travis: I didn’t know they made permanent makeup. I looked like a clown for a month.
Connor: Yeah. They put a curse on me so that no matter what I wore, my clothes were two sizes too small and I felt like a geek.
Travis: You are a geek.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Demigod Files (Percy Jackson and the Olympians))
“
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)
“
picture her naked but with the clown makeup on, and instantly I realize a new fetish has been born. My synaptic train has a new stop: Clowntown.
”
”
Charlie Kaufman (Antkind)
“
There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at first. When you see a clown, most people get a little nervous. There's the pallor and the cakey mortician-style makeup, the shuffling and the untidy hair. But clowns were probably malicious, and they moved fast on those little bicycles and in those little crammed cars. Zombies weren't much of anything. They didn't carry musical instruments and they didn't care whether or not you laughed at them. You always knew what zombies wanted.)
”
”
Kelly Link (The Living Dead (The Living Dead, #1))
“
Christmas was almost three 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)
“
But sometimes nightmares are simply fueled by fear... fear of something we don't understand. A clown isn't scary when it takes off its makeup. A monster isn't so terrifying when you turn on the light. My enemy was my enemy until I looked inside of her and realized we weren't so different, after all.
”
”
J.M. Darhower (Torture to Her Soul (Monster in His Eyes, #2))
“
I kneeled in front of the E M T chair, in front of the mirror on the medicine cabinet, and wiped the rest of the makeup away. My skin was raw, pink and new. The ambulance had a single round light in the middle of the ceiling. The light cast long shadows under my nose, ears, eyes, and chin, and in the shadows I was young and I was a crone, in the exact same moment. That's it, I thought: life is short. The only value of wated time is knowledge. p.295
”
”
Monica Drake (Clown Girl)
“
How was this fair? The girl was wearing heavy makeup, a bedazzled catsuit, and a ridiculously huge bow smack-dab on the top of her head. She should’ve looked like Queen of the Clowns. But she looked cute. And the worst part was that she was unbelievably charming.
”
”
Lynn Painter (Better Than the Movies)
“
I PAINT MY FACE.
By Omrane Khuder.
Mirror, distorted; I sit, paint my Face,
Toxic white Make-up buries my Scars,
My Eyes tell lies; Dumbfounded Confidence hides the Disgrace.
Place the tragic Vehicle called My Life in to Drive,
Sad pathetic Clown; Late for the suppression show,
Despair another time; Let the chuckles and defeat derive.
I paint my Heart; I hide my True.
I paint my Soul; I keep it from You.
I paint, I cannot accept; To ignore you the way you ignore Me?
I paint my scarred and pitiful Face; No Will left to restore Me.
I paint my Face; it’s all I know to do.
My painted Face shatters the Mirror, yet still all I see is You.
”
”
Omrane Khuder
“
Which on am I?" I drew my left eyebrow in a high, puzzled arch.
"Which what?" Crack reached for her makeup kit. "Bottom or fool?" She pulled out a tiny mirror and put another layer of mascara on her giant fake lashes. She used a special oversized mascara brush for her oversized lashes, carried in a big tube.
"No. Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles?" I asked. "Who, in the show?"
She shrugged. "What ever you want, Sugar. Makes no diff to me. A name's just another kind of package. Marketing. Starts the day you're born" p.136
”
”
Monica Drake (Clown Girl)
“
All along the avenue, cotton candy stands, fun houses, and games of chance were tightly shuttered, like clowns without makeup.
”
”
William Hjortsberg (Falling Angel)
“
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)
“
What’s the best practical joke you’ve ever played on another camper? Connor: The golden mango! Travis: Oh, dude, that was awesome. Connor: So anyway, we took this mango and spray painted it gold, right? We wrote: “For the hottest” on it and left it in the Aphrodite cabin while they were at archery class. When they came back, they started fighting over it, trying to figure out which of them was the hottest. It was so funny. Travis: Gucci shoes were flying out the windows. The Aphrodite kids were ripping each other’s clothes and throwing lipstick and jewelry. It was like a rabid herd of wild Bratz. Connor: Then they figured out what we’d done, and they tracked us down. Travis: That was not cool. I didn’t know they made permanent makeup. I looked like a clown for a month. Connor: Yeah. They put a curse on me so that no matter what I wore, my clothes were two sizes too small and I felt like a geek. Travis: You are a geek.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Demigod Files (Percy Jackson and the Olympians))
“
I would have liked to cry: the make-up stopped me, it looked just right, with the cracks, with the places where it was beginning to flake off, tears would have ruined all that. I could cry later, if I still felt like it.
”
”
Heinrich Böll (The Clown)
“
The Vienna Boys Choir decked out in top hats and evil clown make-up could be directly next to me pole-vaulting over giant rotating knives and I'd never know because I'm gazing into the distance deliberating some vaguely imperceptible angst.
”
”
Bill Gray
“
I was left with the choice of wearing the pants either around my ankles or hitched up to my bellybutton. I decided the latter was the lesser of evils, so I went downstairs to have what would likely be the strangest meal of my life while dressed like a clown without makeup.
”
”
Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1))
“
I whispered, "Do you have a rubber?"
He laughed, hushed, a laughing whisper, as though his parents were in the next room, and reached one arm past my head to a nightstand there. "A rubber chicken." He shook the dancing chicken in the air. "Will that do?"
I laughed back, ran a finger along the bumps of the fake chicken skin. "Ribbed and beaked for her pleasure, even. Want me to leave you two alone?"
He threw the chicken on the floor and bit my neck and I giggled and he said, "Never," and he was everywhere then. The couch was a sinking place and I disappeared into the orgy of costumes, the smell of nervous strangers, makeup and smoke, my naked body buried in the perfume of human need.
I took the rubber chicken home. Plucky was my mascot, the souvenir of our date. Later, much later, there was the conception of our child. And now the miscarriage, unexpected, though I should've expected it because, why not? -- family slid through my fingers the same as the old silicone banana-peel trick. After the D&C, after the suctioning away of our tiny fetus, I drew the black heart on Plucky's rubber breast in the place where a chicken might have a heart, over the ridges of implied feathers. Indelible ink.
Now she'd been nabbed by a kid too young to know what love means, what a chicken might mean. Too young to know that a rubber chicken can carry all of love in one indelible ink heart.
”
”
Monica Drake (Clown Girl)
“
Life is a great big beautiful three-ring circus. There are those on the floor making their lives among the heads of lions and hoops of fire, and those in the stands, complacent and wowed, their mouths stuffed with popcorn.
I know less now than ever about life, but I do know its size. Life is enormous. Much grander than what we’ve taken for ourselves, so far.
When the show is over and the tent is packed, the elephants, lions and dancing poodles are caged and mounted on trucks to caravan to the next town. The clown’s makeup has worn, and his bright, red smile has been washed down a sink. All that is left is another performance, another tent and set of lights. We rest in the knowledge: the show must go on.
Somewhere, behind our stage curtain, a still, small voice asks why we haven’t yet taken up juggling. My seminars were like this. Only, instead of flipping shiny, black bowling balls or roaring chainsaws through the air, I juggled concepts.
The world is intrinsically tied together. All things march through time at different intervals but move ahead in one fashion or another.
Though we may never understand it, we are all part of something much larger than ourselves—something anchoring us to the spot we have mentally chosen. We sniff out the rules, through spiritual quests and the sciences. And with every new discovery, we grow more confused.
Our inability to connect what seems illogical to unite and to defy logic in our understanding keeps us from enlightenment. The artists and insane tiptoe around such insights, but lack the compassion to hand-feed these concepts to a blind world.
The interconnectedness of all things is not simply a pet phrase. It is a big “T” truth that the wise spend their lives attempting to grasp.
”
”
Christopher Hawke (Unnatural Truth)
“
I know the clowns wipe the fake, makeup smiles off their faces once the show is done.
”
”
pleasefindthis (I Wrote This For You)
“
The point is that I fell in love, to my bones. That’s how it was. I swear. Her face was swollen, her makeup was a mess, she looked like a clown, but those green eyes, like Cleopatra’s, pierced right through my heart. I’m telling you, Inspector, nothing like that had ever happened to me. I felt a brutal electric shock, like sticking a finger in a socket.
”
”
Isabel Allende (Lovers at the Museum)
“
It's easy to make fun of someone like her, but i love that she doesn't apologize for herself: not even when she curses in from of me; not when people in elevators stare at her makeup style (which i'd say is pretty much geisha-meets-clown; not even when- it should be noted- she made a colossal mistake that cost her a career. She may be not very happy, but she is happy to be. It's more than i can say about myself.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Leaving Time)
“
Instinct caused a woman who had once been so attractive to still attempt makeup and hairdos, Marisa guessed, but more often than not, the effort came off with Mama looking like a clown. Seeing it broke Marisa’s heart, but she didn’t interfere. Her mother didn’t know the difference and these days, it was rare for anyone but Marisa to see her. What little family they had seldom came and Mama’s friends in Agua Dulce, out of respect, were reluctant to gawk at her decline.
”
”
Anna Jeffrey
“
Clowns slap me on the back, and women swirl in front of me, butterfly masks in hand. I ignore much of it, pushing my way to the couches near the french doors, where I can better rest my weary legs. Until now, I’d only witnessed my fellow guests in handfuls, their spite spread thin across the house. To be ensnared among them all, as I am now, is something else entirely, and the further I descend into the uproar, the thicker their malice seems to become. Most of the men look to have spent the afternoon soaking in their cups and are staggering instead of dancing, snarling and staring, their conduct savage. Young women throw their heads back and laugh, their makeup running and hair coming loose as they’re passed from body to body, goading a small group of wives who’ve grouped together for safety, wary of these panting, wild-eyed creatures.
”
”
Stuart Turton (The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle)
“
He would have been bright and gaudy and bizarrely appealing, so far from this tired, aging echo, faded as a clown’s cracking makeup at the end of the night.
”
”
Cole McCade (The Lost (Crow City, #1))
“
A complete and utter shambles. A disaster. It stretches the limits of comprehension that such a thorough display of incompetence could have been managed without willful bloody intent. Such a f—” Shaw trips over the curse word, swallows it back down. “Such a damned disaster.” She is white-lipped, wide-eyed. Every muscle in her face seems tensed. Two red spots stand out on her cheeks like a clown’s make-up. To my right, Clyde and Tabitha shuffle their feet. To my left, Kayla stares intently at one corner of the room, as rigid as the moment the monster hit her.
”
”
Jonathan Wood (No Hero (Arthur Wallace, #1))
“
Even a light-colored shirt or blouse or clown makeup can cause a reflection on the monitor, obscuring some of the data displayed.
”
”
Randall Whitehead
“
I hated running. I hated running the way most people hated clowns. Meaning with a fiery passion. People who thought sweating through their makeup and clothes and chafing in unmentionable areas would be a jolly good time were seriously whacked. That
”
”
Jessica Gadziala (Savior (Savages #3))
“
TEARS OF A CLOWN My boyfriend said, “I think clown makeup is really sexy.” Shortly thereafter, he whispered in my ear, “Seriously, babe, it’s a major turn-on.” He wasn’t joking. —Chelsea
”
”
Robert K. Elder (It Was Over When: Tales of Romantic Dead Ends)
“
She has an abusive husband? Or boyfriend?” “Not according to her. She says she’s single, and I’m not calling her a liar. But the makeup around her eyes? That surely is. She must put it on with a trowel, some days. And the long-sleeve shirts she wears when it’s a hundred degrees plus? They don’t back her position. No, sir. She’s either hooked up with some kind of an asshole or she’s the clumsiest person this side of a circus clown. Now, what can I get for you?
”
”
Lee Child (The Sentinel (Jack Reacher, #25))
“
The old man in the opposite seat has gone now. I can see my reflection in the dark glass, broken up every now and then by the flash of a light. A lock of thick, blonde hair has come loose from its up-do, and oh God, the make-up. I’d forgotten about that. I’m wearing way too much of the bloody stuff. Industrial quantities of it. I’ve been sponged and brushed to within an inch of my life. My eyes have been smothered with kohl and mascara. Apparently, it’s the smoky eyed look, but I’m not too sure. I look like I’ve gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. If the house-mate hadn’t taken it on herself to give me a make-over first thing this morning, then I wouldn’t be looking like a cross between a tangerine and a clown right now. She’s good at plenty of things, Lucy, such as managing an art gallery and navigating her way around the London Underground, but she’s certainly useless when it comes to make-overs. I’ll swing by a shop when I get off the tube and source a packet of wipes
”
”
Mandy Lee (You Don't Know Me (You Don't Know Me, #1))
“
But it was only her old rival Payasa standing behind her.
"¿De dónde?" Payasa sauntered toward her, head thrown back, joy on her face. She wore a blue plaid Pendleton jacket over khakis. Harsh, thick liner circled her defiant eyes.
Her real name was Graciela. Payasa was her placa. It meant "clown." Her street name came from the way she wore her makeup, definitely not from her sense of humor.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (The Choice (Daughters of the Moon #9))
“
A second later, still mid-pee, I realized it was my father in clown makeup, wearing my discarded pom-pom on his head like a fright wig and laughing hysterically. This was the night I discovered that bored parents can be dangerous and that it is very hard to wash urine out of tennis shoes.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (I Choose Darkness)
“
I feel like I’ve just vanquished a bloodthirsty flesh-eating clown.” “The clown had better makeup,” Max deadpanned.
”
”
Lauretta Hignett (Bad Bones (Blood and Magic, #1))
“
I’m aware of the trials and tribulations of Courtney Love. Wade was a clown? And now he’s a Muppeteer? It takes everything I have inside me not to run out the door. “Yeah, someone needs to make better clown makeup,” Wade continues, as he sashays over to the couch and plops down. “Because what’s out there right now is way too thick.” “Did you ever think about being that someone? Did you ever see this problem as an opportunity to make a little money?
”
”
Karyn Bosnak (20 Times a Lady: A Novel)
“
few odd souls wandered about Surf Avenue looking for something to do. Sheets of newspaper blew like tumbleweed down broad, empty streets. Overhead, a pair of sea gulls hovered, scanning the ground for discarded scraps. All along the avenue, cotton candy stands, fun houses, and games of chance were tightly shuttered, like clowns without makeup. Nathan
”
”
William Hjortsberg (Falling Angel)
“
He went into the hall bathroom that separated the two bedrooms and lifted the lid. He yawned. He scratched his head and felt foreign objects in his hair. While he continued to aim the stream into the commode, he leaned to the left to look in the small mirror over the sink and almost had heart failure. He actually might have jumped and briefly missed the pot. Sean had little-girl “things” in his short hair—clips, bows, ponytail bands, jeweled bobby pins. And there was something else—he scraped off some Scotch Tape. His hair was too short so some of that stuff was taped on! But that was the least of it—he had a bright red Angelina Jolie mouth that went way out of the lines. Blue eyelids and pink cheeks. He looked like a clown. He zipped his pants. Then he wet a finger under the faucet and rubbed it over his eyelid. Nothing changed, except that he saw his fingernails were bright green. He washed his hands vigorously. Oh, God—he’d been tattooed in his sleep! He took the bar of soap to his lips; no amount of scrubbing helped. “Frannnnn-ciiiii!” he yelled. A moment later she tapped at the door and he jerked it open. She was casually drying her hands on a dish towel while he was scowling. “Magic marker, I think,” she said, before he could ask the question. “Why?” he asked desperately, totally stunned. Franci shrugged. “She’s not allowed to touch my makeup. And she thinks you look wonderful.” Then she grinned. He stiffened and pursed his lips. “I’m pretty sure I’m out of uniform.” She chuckled. “We’ll think of something. Are you staying for dinner?” “I can’t go out like this!” “Okay, let’s try some fingernail polish remover on your green nails, have some dinner, and then I’ll see what I can do about your, ah, makeup. Really, Sean, rule number one—never close your eyes on a three-year-old.” *
”
”
Robyn Carr (Angel's Peak (Virgin River #10))
“
player who ran around in clown makeup of all things, but he mostly played head games and didn’t seem to have any powers or tech worth speaking of so I’d always ignored the asshole.
”
”
Mia Archer (Villains Don't Date Heroes! (Night Terror and Fialux, #1))
“
hidden from the pedestrians who wandered across to buy discount Viagra; it was deeper into the town, the disorder, the ruinous buildings, the litter, the donkeys cropping grass by the roadside. Reynosa was not its plaza, but rather another hot, dense border town of hard-up Mexicans who spent their lives peering across the frontier, easily able to see—through the slats in the fence, beyond the river—better houses, brighter stores, newer cars, cleaner streets, and no donkeys. At the first stoplight at the intersection of a potholed road of Reynosa, a fat, middle-aged man in shorts and wearing clown makeup—whitened face, red bulb nose, lipsticked mouth—began to juggle three blue balls as the light turned red, and a small girl in a tattered dress, obviously his daughter, passed him a teapot which he balanced on his chin. The small girl hurried to the waiting cars, soliciting pesos. At the next light, a man in sandals and rags juggled three bananas and flexed his muscles while making lunatic faces. A woman hurried from car to car with a basket, offering tamales. Farther on was a fire-eater, a skinny man in pink pajamas gulping smoky flames from a torch.
”
”
Paul Theroux (On The Plain Of Snakes: A Mexican Journey)