Quotes by Antonin Artaud

“I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.”

“All writing is filth”

“Que les potes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de mme voir que c'est notre vnration devant ce qui a t dj fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous ptrifie, qui nou...”

“If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.”

“Before saying anything further about culture, I consider the world is hungry and does not care about culture, and people artificially want to turn these thoughts away from hunger and direct them to...”

“I myself am an absolute abyss.”

“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, ...”

“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...”

“[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.”

“I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want t...”

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

“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...”

“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, o...”

“It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.”

“However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itself often prevents people from distinguishing between order and those who stand for order, and lead...”

“Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones.”

“All true languageis incomprehensible,Like the chatterof a beggar’s teeth.”

“Where there is a stink of shitthere is a smell of being.”

“The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Min...”

“The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scen...”