I abandon myself to the fever of dreams, in search for new laws.
ANTONIN ARTAUDLike 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.
More Antonin Artaud Quotes
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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.
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Before our eyes is fought a battle of symbols, for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins and when the poetry that occurs on the stage sustains and superheats the realized symbols.
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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.
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I know each conversation with a psychiatrist in the morning made me want to hang myself because I knew I could not strangle him.
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Squander your riches far from this unfeeling body to which no season, either spiritual or sensual, makes any difference.
ANTONIN ARTAUD -
Without sarcasm I sink into chaos.
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Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.
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Poetry is a dissociating and anarchic force which through analogy, associations and imagery, thrives on the destruction of known relationships.
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I do not work within the confines of any realm. I work in the unique moment of duration.
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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.
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The fixation of the theater in one language–written words, music, lights, noises–betokens its imminent ruin.
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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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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.
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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.
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Those who live, live off the dead.
ANTONIN ARTAUD






