...the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.
There remains madness, "the madness that one locks up," ... That madness or another.. We all know, in fact, that the insane owe their incarceration to a tiny number of legally reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their freedom (or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened. I am willing to admit that they are, to some degree, victims of their imagination, in that it induces them not to pay attention to certain rules - outside of which the species feels threatened - which we are all supposed to know and respect.
... the realistic attitude ... clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and stultifies both science and art by assiduously flattering the lowest of tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog's life.
If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of aging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them - first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason.
Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night.
I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old.
The mind of hte man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's content. And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.
I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.
At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind ot thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. ... There are fairy tales to be written for adults, fairy tales still almost blue.
Joseph Delteil: "Alas! I believe in the virtue of birds. And a feather is all it takes to make me die laughing."
Desnos... reads himself like an open book, and does nothing to retain the pages, which fly away in the windy wake of his life.
After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.
Les Champs magnétiques: the first purely Surrealist work.
Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts. It also is, if you like, an artificial paradise, and the taste one has for it derives from Baudelaire's criticism for the same reason as the others. Thus the analysis of the mysterious effects and special pleasures it can produce - in many respects Surrealism occurs as a new vice which does not necessarily seem to be restricted o the happy few; like hashish, it has the ability to satisfy all manner of tastes - such an analysis has to be included in the present study.
The mind becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its desires are made manifest, where the pos and cons are constantly consumed, where its obscurity does not betray it.
This is the most beautiful night of all, the lightning-filled night: day, compared to it, is night.
.. that the mind is ripe for something more than the benign joys it allows itself in general.
I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.
Surrealism is the "invisible ray" which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. "You are no longer trembling, carcass." This summer the roses are blue, the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
