When everything that is called art was well and truly riddled with rheumatism, the photographer lit the thousands of candles whose power is contained in his flame, and the sensitive paper absorbed by degrees the blackness cut out of some ordinary object. He had invented a fresh and tender flash of lightning.

I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles.

But let's speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

To make a poem, take one newspaper, one pair of scissors, snip the words one by one and put them in a bag. Shake gently, draw them out at random, and copy them conscientiously... DADA est mort. DADA est idiot. Vive DADA!

Is it a spiral of water in the tragic gleam of a revolver, an egg, a glistening arc or the floodgate of reason, a keen ear attuned to a mineral hiss, or a turbine of algebraic formulas? (On Man Ray's first photograms, 1921.)

Thought is made in the mouth.