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
It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses that creativity and inspiration are often felt more acutely in their absence, suggesting the importance of both presence and absence in the creative process.
Antonin Artaud emphasizes that it is not the act of creation itself that drives him, but rather the lack of inspiration that compels him to work. This paradox highlights the complex relationship between absence and presence in the realm of creativity; it suggests that without experiencing the void of inspiration, the value of creativity may not be appreciated, as the longing for that inspiration fuels the creative endeavor.
Themes
CreativityInspirationAbsencePresenceArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a creative workshop to emphasize the importance of inspiration.
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
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.
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
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