The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
I suppose the artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones.
plantitIt will sproutBut forget about the rustic festivitiesFor the explosive word falls harmlessly eternal throughthe compact generations
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
To be moved confuses the soul. One cannot convey these kinds of memories any more than the events of a dream……if I have complained too long, it is because my memory, no longer having any fixed abode, has to carry its luggage with it.
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion on the other hand produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
Certainly I believe in luck. How else do you explain the success of those you don’t like?
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
The joy of the young is to disobey – but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one’s preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.