“To break through language in order to touch life is to create or re-create the theater.”

A tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.

This is why true beauty never strikes us directly. The setting sun is beautiful because of all it makes us lose.

By suicide I introduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will … now I choose the direction of my thought and the direction of my faculties, my tendencies, my reality.

A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt.

The truth of life lies in the impulsiveness of matter. The mind of man has been poisoned by concepts. Do not ask him to be content, ask him only to be calm, to believe that he has found his place. But only the madman is really calm.

I myself am an absolute abyss.

I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.

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.

Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY to reenact their escape.

With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows.

The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.

Without sarcasm I sink into chaos.

Actors are athletes of the heart.

Like all magic cultures expressed by appropriate hieroglyphs, the true theater has its shadows too, and, of all languages and all arts, the theater is the only one left whose shadows have shattered their limitations.

Excuse my absolute freedom. I refuse to make a distinction between any of the moments of myself.

I am stigmatized by a living death in which real death holds no terrors for me.

In the original language, ‘Fear the Lord’ doesn’t mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him.

In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.

The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible.

To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.

Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.

He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good

Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised – so it’s no longer “in the closet,” as it were. It’s part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature.

If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.