Quotes from Blaise Cendrars

If one wants to live one is better to incline towards imbecility than intelligence, and live only in the absurd. Intelligence consists of eating stars and turning them into dung. And the universe, at the most optimistic estimate, is nothing but God's digestive system.

Estar aquí o más allá, libre o recluido, lo importante es sentirse a gusto; de exterior que era la vida, se hace interior, pero su intensidad permanece igual. Ya sabes, es curioso a donde va a parar la alegría de vivir a veces

Io non intingo la penna in un calamaio, ma nella vita. Scrivere, non è vivere. È forse sopravvivere a se stessi.

A man returns to die, between four walls, with the dawn, a collar of iron around the neck, to the withers, the tongue hanging ... as on the Goya print.

Now, the drug is taboo. You do not fool around with it. You give yourself to it and you are caught. I have a horror of it. I have lived in China without ever being curious enough to put a pipe to my lips. It is not a question of virtue. I do not like pharmacopoeia. I like lucidity. It is my guiding star. I will have nothing to do with the vertigo of opium which, with the single exception of De Quincey, is no friend to poetry. It is a filthy poison.

Do not forget that when the heart petrifies there is no progress. All science must be like a fruit, so ordered that it may hang from a tree of the flesh & ripen in the sunlight of passion. Histology, photography, electric bells, telescopes, birds, amperes, smoothing irons, etc. -this is only good for bouncing off the arse of humanity.

Et ne voulez-vous pas vous amuser, c'est-à-dire, détruire, créer, réussir, perdre? bref, faire quelque chose de nouveau et de gai, sans autre arrière-pensée que de jouir, jouir de la minute présente, flottante, incertaine, fugitive, et pourtant violente comme un explosif?

Bisogna affrettarsi a riderne per non dover piangere perché la vita è davvero troppo strana.

Without the help of selfishness, the human animal would never have developed. Egoism is the vine by which man hoisted himself out of the swamp and escaped from the jungle.

I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.