No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French Surrealist. Surrealism and Painting (1928).)

If surrealism ever comes to adopt a particular line of moral conduct, it has only to accept the discipline that Picasso has accepted and will continue to accept.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist. Surrealism and Painting (1928).)

In the world we live in ... everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French Surrealist. Surrealism and Painting (1928).)

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist. Surrealism and Painting (1928).)

Dali is like a man who hesitates between talent and genius, or, as one might once have said, between vice and virtue.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist. repr. in What Is Surrealism? Selected Writings, ed. Franklin Rosemont (1978). The First Dali Exhibition, Preface (Nov. 1929).)

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French Surrealist. repr. In Manifestoes of Surrealism (1969). Manifesto of Surrealism (1924).)

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist. Mad Love, ch. 1 (1937, trans. 1987).)

To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery?even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness?is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French Surrealist. repr. In Manifestos of Surrealism (1969). Manifesto of Surrealism (1924).)

Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist. repr. In Manifestos of Surrealism (1969). "Manifesto of Surrealism," (1924).)

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

(Andr? Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist. Nadja (1928).)