Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.

What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.

The real function of art is to change mental patterns ... making new thought possible.

Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.

The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.

Dancing is the last word in life. In dancing one draws nearer to oneself.

What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.