To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of. I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!
Andre BretonNo rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.
Andre BretonHumor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.
Andre BretonPast and future monopolize the poetโs 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.
Andre BretonThere 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 lifeโs meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work.
Andre BretonOver and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone- over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience- I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall recognize what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear, so that I alone can answer for its fate?
Andre Breton