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I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors I will not go looking for keys.

Andre Breton

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Andre Breton
Age: 70 †
Born: 1896
Born: February 18
Died: 1966
Died: September 28
Art Theorist
Drawer
Essayist
Novelist
Photographer
Poet
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Andre Breton
D'André Breton
Andre Breto
René Dobrant
Book
Keys
Like
Interested
Doors
Books
Knowing
Names
Looking
Ajar
Left
Insist

More quotes by Andre Breton

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Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.
Andre Breton
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The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.
Andre Breton
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Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.
Andre Breton
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One can understand why Surrealism was not afraid to make for itself a tenet of total revolt, complete insubordination, of sabotage according to rule, and why it still expects nothing save from violence.
Andre Breton
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I find it impossible to think of a picture save as a window, and my first concern about a window is to find out what it looks out on... and there is nothing I love so much as something which stretches away from me out of sight.
Andre Breton
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The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.
Andre Breton
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Dada is a state of mind.
Andre Breton
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The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb.
Andre Breton
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The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.
Andre Breton
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Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.
Andre Breton
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Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principle problems of life.
Andre Breton
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...with the end of my breath, which is the beginning of yours.
Andre Breton
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We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.
Andre Breton
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Trust in the inexhaustible character of the murmur.
Andre Breton
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The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly
Andre Breton
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The eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror... if it has only the capacity to reflect.
Andre Breton
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Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.
Andre Breton
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Under his (Marc Chagall, ed.) sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting.
Andre Breton
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Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.
Andre Breton
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Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.
Andre Breton