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1 " My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness. "
― André Breton , What Is Surrealism?: Selected Writings
2 " Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose. "
― André Breton , Anthology of Black Humor
3 " Il faut que l’homme s’évade de cette lice ridicule qu’on lui a faite: le prétendu réel actuel avec la perspective d’un réel futur qui ne vaille guère mieux. Chaque minute pleine porte en elle-même la négation de siècles d’histoire boitillante et cassée. Ceux à qui il appartient de faire virevolter ces huit flamboyants au-dessus de nous ne le pourront qu’avec de la sève pure._ Manifestes du surréalisme "
― André Breton
4 " We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing. "
― André Breton , The Magnetic Fields
5 " The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us. "
6 " Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. "
7 " Because of the earth’s roundness, Genghis Khan, in the fever of possession and destruction, hastened his own overthrow by invading lands that he had already razed and conquered. Not only is it impossible to know from where we come, but also from whom we come: nothing in common, in any case, with those who pass for being the “authors of our days” – which days? Better to invent a genealogy based on pure whim and the leanings of our hearts, but what if they don’t agree? "
8 " Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are. "
9 " The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows "
10 " Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all. "
― André Breton , Nadja
11 " I am the soul in limbo. "
12 " The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot. "
13 " (speaking of Ann Radcliffe) A work of art worthy of the name is one which gives us back the freshness of the emotions of childhood. "
14 " There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life’s meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work. "
15 " What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real. "
16 " The imaginary is what tends to become real. "
17 " Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject. "
18 " Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing. "
19 " Past and future monopolize the poet’s sensory and intellectual faculties, detached from the immediate spectacle. These two philtres become utterly clear the moment one stops being hypnotized by the cloudy precipitate constituted by the world of today. "
20 " It is hard not to see into the future, faced with today's blind architecture - a thousand times more stupid and more revolting than that of other ages. How bored we shall be inside! "
