87 quotes
You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
Le Mystère Laïc (1928)
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
I am a lie who always speaks the truth.
Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
Les Enfants Terribles translation by Rosamond Lehmann (1929)
After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
Diary of an Unknown (1988)
Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
Diary of an Unknown (1988)
There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.
Diary of an Unknown (1988)
There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.
He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
The Louvre is like the morgue; one goes there to identify one’s friends.
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
Le Rappel á l'ordre (1926)
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.