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.

In the world we live in everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.

Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.

For me, the single word "God" suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque.

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man...is above all the plaything of his memory.

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.

Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.