Antonin Artaud

It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence read more

It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.

The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything -- gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness -- read more

The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything -- gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness -- rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations. To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre.

There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, read more

There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then read more

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.

Where there is a stink of shit there is a smell of being

Where there is a stink of shit there is a smell of being