Quotes from Blaise Cendrars

The single fact of existing is already a true happiness.

Humanity lives in its fiction.

One's life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d'you know, it's most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.

Writing is a noble privilege compared with the lot of most people, who live like parts of a machine, who live only to keep the gears of society pointlessly turning.

Life The machine The human soul A 75mm breech My portrait

My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.

Such music is not only a new art form but a new reason for living.

Humanity lives in its fiction.

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.

what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust,stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?

One's life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d'you know, it's most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.

My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe

Life The machine The human soul A 75mm breech My portrait

A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was coming out of a suffocating nightmare and that the low clouds flying before the wind were the shreds of an evil dream.

The guillotine is the masterpiece of the plastic arts Its click Creates perpetual motion ("The Head")

The only word in the Martian language is written phonetically: Kay-ray-kh-kuh-ko-kex. It means whatever you want it to mean.

But me no buts, we're going to make whoopee, I tell you.

I used the word 'prose' in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu . Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more open, popular.

Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress...

À quoi bon écrire ? tout s'imprime en moi et c'est peut-être la pure poésie que de se laisser imprégner et de déchiffrer en soi-même la signature des choses.

Modern man has a need for simplification that tends to find its expression one way or another. And this artificial monotony which he takes pains to create, this monotony which is slowly taking over the world, this monotony is the sign of our greatness. It bears the mark of a certain will-power, the will to utility; it is the expression of utility, a law that governs all our modern activity: the Law of Utility.

Feelings flake off and fall in dust. The senses, vitrified, can no longer experience pleasure; they crack at the least provocation. Each of us, within, was as if devoured by a conflagration, and our hearts were no more than a pinch of ashes. Our souls were laid waste. For a long time now we had believed in nothing, not even in nothingness.

Je suis triste et malade. Peut-etre a cause de Vous, peut-etre a cause d'un autre. Peut-etre a cause de Vous.