It's a circus out there, mama and your baby's got the…

When he call me mama, lil mama, I call him baby

— Nicki Minaj

“Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We…

— Chris Abani

“I feel gawky and morbid as somebody in a sideshow.”

— Sylvia Plath

“But just as much as it was a sport, it was a sideshow—a carny act that eventually made it to Broadway. So the next…

— David Shoemaker

I'm no sideshow. I fight for real.

— James Toney

Now the freaks are on television, the freaks are in the movies. And it's no longer the sideshow, it's the whole show. The colorful…

— Jonathan Winters

“A crowd of men stood in front of them. Of all ages, with expressions of sex-wonder in their eyes, gazing curiously as men who…

— Jim Tully

“I'm the first to admit that I don't write right. Now, relax and enjoy the show! The sideshow, that is.”

— Lori R. Lopez

“There is only one of me and so many of the people who are not like me, and maybe I'm just an amusing distraction…

— Matthew Quick

I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow.

— Anonymous

“All of the myths of mankind are nothing but show business,' the other man said to me during our initial meeting. 'Everything that we…

— Thomas Ligotti

Everyone has their secrets, and there are shadows following us all.

— Chrystal Vaughan

In Roslyn, Pennsylvania, we started our real-life family circus. They provided the inspiration for my cartoons. I provided the perspiration.

— Bil Keane

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…

— Anne Sexton

I would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or…

— Natasha Lyonne