Antonin Artaud Quotes

58 Sourced Quotes

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.

Antonin Artaud
We must wash literature off ourselves. We want to be men above all, to be human.

Antonin Artaud
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
With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows.

Antonin Artaud
The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.

Antonin Artaud
I prefer the people who eat off the bare earth the delirium from which they were born.

Antonin Artaud
Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.

Antonin Artaud
This is why true beauty never strikes us directly. The setting sun is beautiful because of all it makes us lose.

Antonin Artaud