Ablbl > Ablbl's Quotes

“When man resolved to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg. In doing this, he was practicing surrealism without knowing it.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire

“Not only are mortals rotten, the very atmosphere in which we live is materially and physically rotten, swarming with maggots, with obscene appearances, poisonous minds, and foul organisms.”
― Antonin Artaud

“Those who live, live off the dead.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”
― Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings

“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself, but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
― Antonin Artaud

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.”
― Antonin Artaud

“Without sarcasm I sink into chaos.”
― Antonin Artaud

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.”
― Antonin Artaud

“The theater is the only place in the world where a gesture, once made, can never be made the same way twice.”
― Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double

“Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.”
― Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double

“The extreme point of mysticism, I hold it now in the real and in my body, like a toilet broom.”
― Antonin Artaud