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

Antonin Artaud

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Genius Head Himself Life Preparation Shine Solution Understand
I cannot conceive any work of art as having a separate existence from life itself.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Art Existence Life Myself Separate Work
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
I call for actors burning at the stakes, laughing at the flames.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Actor Burning Call Flame Laughter Myself
If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Destroy Myself Suicide Togetherness
Excuse my absolute freedom. I refuse to make a distinction between any of the moments of myself.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Freedom Moments Myself Refusal
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
I know each conversation with a psychiatrist in the morning made me want to hang myself because I knew I could not strangle him.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Conversation Hang Morning Myself
Squander your riches far from this unfeeling body to which no season, either spiritual or sensual, makes any difference.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Difference Feeling Rich Sensuality Spiritual
We must wash literature off ourselves. We want to be men above all, to be human.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Human Literature Ourselves
There is nothing like an insane asylum for gently incubating death.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Asylum Death Insane
Actors are athletes of the heart.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Actor Athlete Heart One Liner
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
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
How hard is it, when everything encourages us to sleep, though we may look about us with conscious, clinging eyes, to wake and yet look about us as in a dream, with eyes that no longer know their function and whose gaze is turned inward.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Encouragement Function Hard Ourselves Sleep Wake Up
All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Mindset People Poet Quality Word Writing
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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Angel Human Live Need Pain Strength Swallow Understand
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 Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Extinct Mindset Slow University Way Wrap
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
The fixation of the theater in one language–written words, music, lights, noises–betokens its imminent ruin.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Language Noise Ruin Theatre Writing
I am a man by virtue of my hands and my feet, my belly, my heart of meat, my stomach whose knots reunite me to the putrefaction of life.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Hands Life Man Myself Virtue
The true theater, because it moves and makes use of living instruments, continues to stir up shadows where life has never ceased to grope its way.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Instrument Live Shadow Theatre True Way
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.
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Essential Forget Language Myself Mysterious Possible Talk
Life consists of burning up questions.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Burning Consist Life One Liner Question
In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Mindset Ourselves Present Skin State
In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the Peyote tells us, where to find it.
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Beyond Consciousness Finding Man Material Ourselves Wonder
Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Cruelty Decision Determination Intention

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

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

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