Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into... account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to "realize" myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to ha...ve "succeeded" this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is "realizable." Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual... needs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I had any doubts at all about the justice of my dislike for Shakespeare, that doubt vanished completely. What a crude, immoral,... vulgar, and senseless work Hamlet is. The whole thing is based on pagan vengeance; the only aim is to gather together as many effects as possible; there is no rhyme or reason about it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to ta...ke a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand idly by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for the... eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »