I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.
Antonin ArtaudRead
If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the magic in life comes from engaging with our actions rather than overthinking their interpretations.
Antonin Artaud emphasizes the importance of experiencing life directly and energetically, rather than getting caught up in the contemplation of the meanings and forms of our actions. He suggests that a lack of 'magic' in our lives often stems from this tendency to overanalyze, thereby losing the spontaneous force that drives authentic living.
Themes
LifeMagicActionsForceExperience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to inspire people to take action rather than dwell on doubts.
More from Antonin Artaud
All quotes →Cruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness.
Antonin ArtaudRead
I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat.
Antonin ArtaudRead
It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
Antonin ArtaudRead
A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt . . .
Antonin ArtaudRead
In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the Peyote tells us, where to find it.
Antonin ArtaudRead
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