When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.
My only politics have been friendship.
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.
The poet Paul Éluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car.
The joy of the young is to disobey
It was the East that should have sent us missionaries.
Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it's a miracle that we don't dissolve in our baths.
One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.
And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
Not only should you not accept a prize. You should not try to deserve one either.
A little too much is just enough for me.
Art is science in the flesh.
The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
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.
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
It is not inspiration; it is expiration.
What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
I am burning myself up and will always do so.
The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.
Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
You have comfort. You don't have luxury. And don't tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
Beauty makes one lose one's head. Poetry is born of this decapitation
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
Find first, seek later.
Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
One must not mistake majority for truth.
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.
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.
Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.
I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
Silence moves faster when it's going backward.
Poetry is a religion with no hope.
Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love
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.
There's no such thing as love; only proof of love.
It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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.
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.
The only way to kill death is through photography.
The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Living is a horizontal fall.
Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
Vivre est une chute horizontale. Life is a horizontal fall.
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
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.
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
Everyone's pet is the most outstanding. This begets mutual blindness.
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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.
It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.
Without resistance you can do nothing
