There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.
Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.
The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.
I’m not willing just to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and of liberty.
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show. Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo.
Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms.
It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.
Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.
The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.