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We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.

Antonin Artaud

I call for actors burning at the stakes, laughing at the flames.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Actor Burning Call Flame Laughter Myself
Destroy yourselves, you who are desperate, and you who are tortured in body and soul, abandon all hope. There is no more solace for you in this world. The world lives off your rotting flesh.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Body Desperate Destroy Soul World Yourself
When we speak the word ‘life,’ it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Form Fragile Life Reach Surface Talk Word
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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Art Culture Expression Language Limitation Magic Oneself Shatter Theatre
And 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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Artistic Flame Hell Ourselves Time Victim
Excuse my absolute freedom. I refuse to make a distinction between any of the moments of myself.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Freedom Moments Myself Refusal
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

Book Leadership Myself Open Reality Writing
A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Drive Experience Kind Liberty Potential Reality Revolution Shake
Actors are athletes of the heart.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Actor Athlete Heart One Liner
Don’t tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a culture on the fatigue of your bones.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Bone Culture Fatigue Price Yourself
Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Enough Life Myself Stage Tragedy
In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the Peyote tells us, where to find it.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Beyond Consciousness Finding Man Material Ourselves Wonder
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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Believe Himself Life Man Mindset Place Poison Truth
If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Force Form Imagination Life Magic Observation Ourselves
We have the right to lie, but not about the heart of the matter.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Feeling Heart Lying Right
Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Cruelty Decision Determination Intention

We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.

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We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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