It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physical light and mental light coexist on very poor terms.

What’s the good of these great fragile fits of enthusiasm, these jaded jumps of joys? We know nothing anymore, but the dead stars; we gaze at their faces; and we gasp with pleasure. Our mouths are dry as the lost beaches, and our eyes turn aimlessly and without hope. Now all that remain are these cafés where we meet to drink these cool drinks, these diluted spirits, and the tables are stickier than the pavements where our shadows of the day before have fallen.

There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.

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.

No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.

Surrealism is based on the belief in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.