Whatever we succeed in doing is a transformation of something we have failed to do. Thus, when we fail, it is only because we have given up.

Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have even become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit. So the whole question comes down to this: can the human mind master what the human mind has made?

You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.

Do you not realise that dance is the pure act of metamorphosis?

We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.