French writer & poet (1896-1966)
All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Mad Love
It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physical light and mental light coexist on very poor terms.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Anthology of Black Humor
Tell me whom you haunt and I'll tell you who you are.
ANDRÉ BRETON
attributed, André Breton: Magus of Surrealism
I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors; I will not go looking for keys.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Nadja
Only temptation is divine.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Mad Love
We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.
ANDRÉ BRETON
The Magnetic Fields
Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Surrealist Manifesto
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.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Surrealist Manifesto
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.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Surrealist Manifesto
The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
ANDRÉ BRETON
attributed, Man and His Symbols
I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Surrealist Manifesto
I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Manifestoes of Surrealism
This cancer of the mind which consists of thinking all too sadly that certain things 'are' while others, which well might be, 'are not'.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Second Manifesto of Surrealism
Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Surrealist Manifesto
It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Manifestoes of Surrealism