I shed more tears than God could ever have required.

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

Elle est retrouvée!-Quoi? -l’Éternité.C’est la mer mêléeAu soleil.Je devins un opéra fabuleux : je vis que tous les êtres ont une fatalité de bonheur : l’action n’est pas la vie, mais une façon de g...

Blood was flowing – in Bluebeard’s house, in the abattoirs, in the circuses where God had set his seal to whiten the windows. Blood and Milk flowed together.

The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire.He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back...

No one’s serious at seventeen,When lindens line the promenades

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star … And I dance.

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

L’aube exalteé ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes, et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir!(And dawn, exalted like a host of doves – and then I’ve seen what men believe they’ve seen!)

My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:From time to time my heart is like some oakWhose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes.Toute lune est atroce et tout soliel amer:L’ cre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j’aille à la mer!

Cela s’est passé. Je sais aujourd’hui saluer la beauté.

What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

Love…no such thing.Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that’s not love. That’s stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn’t exist. Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists....

On the blue summer evenings, I will go along the paths,And walk over the short grass, as I am pricked by the wheat:Daydreaming I will feel the coolness on my feet.I will let the wind...

Aucun des sophismes de la folie, – la folie qu’on enferme, – n’a été oublié par moi : je pourrais les redire tous, je tiens le système.

Morality is the weakness of the mind.

In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.

O seasons, O castles,What soul is without flaws?All its lore is known to me,Felicity, it enchants us all.

But the problem is to make the soul into a monster

Elle est retrouvée!Quoi? -l’Éternité.C’est la mer alléeAvec le soleil.

À l’aurore, armés d’une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes. (In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.)

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.

The Poet makes himself a seer through a long, vast and painstaking derangement of all the senses

True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.

The same bourgeois magic everywhere the mail train sets you down.