Quotes from Raymond Queneau

When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing.

The classical author who writes his tragedy observing a certain number of known rules is freer than the poet who writes down whatever comes into his head and is slave to other rules of which he knows nothing.

Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.

He sought an adventure but didn't find one. He was inexperienced and besides he didn't have too much imagination.

La vie? Un rien l'amène, un rien l'anime, un rien la mine, un rien l'emmène.

True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love.

The really inspired person is never inspired: he's always inspired: he doesn't go looking for inspiration and he doesn't get up in arms about artistic technique.

His thoughts were hemmed in. One can only draw curved lines on the terrestrial sphere which, as they extend, forever meet with themselves. At such intersections we always encounter what we have already seen.

When one made love to zero spheres embraced their arches and prime numbers caught their breath...

The world is not what it seems—but it isn't anything else, either.

Rules cease to exist once they have outlived their value, but forms live on eternally. There are forms of the novel which impose on the suggested topic all the virtues of the Number. Born of the very expression and of the diverse aspects of the tale, connected by nature with the guiding idea, daughter and mother of all the elements that it polarizes, a structure develops, which transmits to the works the last reflections of Universal Light and the last echoes of the Harmony of Worlds.

One must see everything.

As the saying goes: time is money- so give me some money to think.

He wanted to be content with an identity nicely chopped into pieces of varying lengths, but whose character was always similar, without dyeing it in autumnal colors, drenching it in April showers or mottling it with the instability of clouds.

We have come from all the countries of the world and are going to Saintes-Maries de la Mer. Nomads of the enigma, we gather there each year after having carried our mystery through ordinary countryside and fluid towns. Since we become transformed by our wanderings we are despised by those who stand still and retain a memory of giant serpents and metallic green.

The poet is never inspired, because he is the master of that which appears to others as inspiration. He does not wait for inspiration to fall out of the heavens like roasted ortolans. He knows how to hunt...He is never inspired because he is unceasingly inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposition, subjected to his will, submissive to his own activity...

Spiders' teeth are not so long as a torment that cannot be avowed.

I'll pun him so many puns that even his arrogance will finally be expunged.

The only advantage he could see in the change was that he had a small desk in his room; his capacity for isolation was thereby increased. But none of this changed his life very much. He continued his games of billiards and his reading. And was periodically overwhelmed by abominable fits of despair from which he was abruptly extricated by a ridiculous but stubborn optimism, an absurd love of life.

El verdadero poeta no se encuentra nunca "inspirado": está precisamente por encima de ese más y de ese menos, iguales a sus ojos, que son la técnica y la inspiración; iguales porque domina ambas a la perfección. El verdadero inspirado nunca está inspirado: lo está siempre; no busca la inspiración ni se irrita contra técnica alguna.»

Inspiration which consists in blind obedience to every impulse is in reality a sort of slavery.

L'instruction! Voyez ce que c'est, monsieur, que l'instruction. On apprend quelque chose à l'école, on se donne même du mal, beaucoup de mal, pour apprendre quelque chose à l'école, et puis vingt ans après, ou même avant, ce n'est plus ça, les choses ont changé, on ne sait plus rien, alors vraiment ce n'était pas la peine. Aussi je préfère penser qu'apprendre.

Il y a des rêves qui se déroulent comme des incidents sans importance, de la vie éveillée on ne retiendrait pas des choses comme ça et cependant ils intéressent lorsqu'on les saisit au matin se poussant en désordre contre la porte des paupières.

Pour la première fois, en buvant des cerises à l'eau-de-vi', je me saoûlai. C'était aux Andelys, je crois, et ma famille me regardait fort amusée. Elle ne pensait pas qu'un jour mes fortes cuites la feraient un peu déchanter