Novelists From France

"Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since, at least from man’s birth until his death, thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the dream, from the point of view of time, and taking into consideration only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely limiting, the moments of waking) has still today been so grossly neglected."

"If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them - first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason. The analysts themselves have everything to gain by it. But it is worth noting that no means has been designated a priori for carrying out this undertaking, that until further notice it can be construed to be the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success is not dependent upon the more or less capricious paths that will be followed."

"Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality."

"I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own."

"We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary, escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected by the sentinels of common sense."

"It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled."

"We all know, in fact, that the insane.. ..derive a great deal of comfort and consolation from their imagination, that they enjoy their madness sufficiently to endure the thought that its validity does not extend beyond themselves. And, indeed, hallucinations, illusions, etc., are not a source of trifling pleasure... These people are honest to a fault, and their 'naiveté' has no peer but my own. Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this madness has taken shape, and endured."

"Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality. There remains madness, 'the madness that one locks up', as it has aptly been described. That madness or another.."

"But it is true that we would not dare venture so far, it is not merely a question of distance. Threat is piled upon threat, one yields, abandons a portion of the terrain to be conquered. This imagination which knows no bounds is henceforth allowed to be exercised only in strict accordance with the laws of an arbitrary utility; it is incapable of assuming this inferior role for very long and, in the vicinity of the twentieth year, generally prefers to abandon man to his lusterless fate."

"So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life — real life, I mean — that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a new-born babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything."

"Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is near at hand; the worst material conditions are fine. The woods are white or black, one will never sleep."

"[T]his cancer of the mind which consists of thinking all too sadly that certain things 'are' while others, which well might be, 'are not'."

"I was asked to make a report on the Italian situation to this special committee of the 'gas cell', which made it clear to me that I was to stick to the statistical facts (steel production etc.) and above all not to get involved with ideology. I couldn't do it."

"Pure psychic automatism, by which one seeks to express, be it verbally, in writing, or in any other manner, (is) the real working of the mind. Dictated by the unconsciousness, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and free from aesthetic or moral preoccupations."

"Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or not at all."

"La beauté sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas."

"Eh, gentlemen, let us reckon upon accidents! Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin."

"Tous pour un, un pour tous, c'est notre devise"

"My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends."

"Sleeping on a plank has one advantage — it encourages early rising."

"Rien ne réussit comme le succès."

"I was exposed to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant, Balzac."

"Although I work, and seldom cease, At Dumas père and Dumas fils, Alas, I cannot make me care For Dumas fils and Dumas père."

"For many years, I used to take The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas with me anytime I traveled. I’ve probably read it 20 or more times."

"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?"

"Les chaînes du mariage sont si lourdes qu'il faut être deux pour les porter ; quelquefois trois."

"Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires ; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis : «Cherchez la femme !»"

"Cherchez la femme, pardieu ! cherchez la femme !"

"My friend, the pleasures to which we are not accustomed oppress us more than the griefs with which we are familiar."

"Eh! sire, that is the fate of truth; she is a stern companion; she bristles all over with steel; she wounds those whom she attacks, and sometimes him who speaks her."

"Learn ever to separate the king and the principle of royalty. The king is but man; royalty is the spirit of God. When you are in doubt as to which you should serve, forsake the material appearance for the invisible principle, for this is everything."

"You are young, and your bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet remembrances.""

"Weep," said Athos, "weep, heart full of love, youth, and life! Alas, would I could weep like you!"

"Les êtres humains avouent leurs pires faiblesses quand ils s'étonnent qu'un maître du monde ne soit pas sottement indolent, présomptueux, ou cruel."

"Je savais que le bien comme le mal est affaire de routine, que le temporaire se prolonge, que l'extérieur s'infiltre au dedans, et que le masque, à la longue, devient visage."

"Des moments libres. Toute vie bien réglée a les siens, et qui ne sait pas les provoquer ne sait pas vivre."

"Le véritable lieu de naissance est celui où l'on a porté pour la première fois un coup d'oeil intelligent sur soi-même: mes premières patries ont été des livres."

"La lettre écrite m'a enseigné à écouter la voix humaine, tout comme les grandes attitudes immobiles des statues m'ont appris à apprécier les gestes."

"Tous nous serions transformés si nous avions le courage d'être ce que nous sommes."

"On ne doit plus craindre les mots lorsqu'on a consenti aux choses."

"Nous nous croyons purs tant que nous méprisons ce que nous ne désirons pas."

"Nos défauts sont parfois les meilleurs adversaires que nous opposions à nos vices."

"Il n'est pas difficile de nourrir des pensées admirables lorsque les étoiles sont présentes."

"Avoir du mérite à s'abstenir d'une faute, c'est une façon d'être coupable."

"Tout silence n'est fait que de paroles qu'on n'a pas dites. C'est pour cela peut-être que je devins un musicien. Il fallait quelqu'un pour exprimer ce silence, lui faire rendre tout ce qu'il contenait de tristesse, pour ainsi dire le faire chanter. Il fallait qu'il ne se servît pas des mots, toujours trop précis pour n'être pas cruels, mais simplement de la musique."

"Le malheur est que, parfois, des souhaits s'accomplissent, afin que se perpétue le supplice de l'espérance."

"Je crois qu'il faut presque toujours un coup de folie pour bâtir un destin."

"(how do you know when you reach your goal?) It is a clear intuition, but it is at the same time mysterious. It is as though the finished work had existed previously but had somehow disappeared from the earth, and all I did was rediscover it. Marguerite Yourcenar compared that flash of discovery to the mysterious moment when the baker knows it is time to stop kneading the dough."

"In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir … designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring experiments on matter itself, or whether it was understood to symbolize trials of the mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time."

"il [Zénon] savait fort bien qu'il n'existe aucun accommodement durable entre ceux qui cherchent, pèsent, dissèquent, et s'honorent d'être capables de penser demain autrement qu'aujourd'hui, et ceux qui croient ou affirment croire, et obligent sous peine de mort leurs semblables à en faire autant."