RENE CHAR

For an inheritance to be really great, the hand of the defunct must not be seen.

A poem is the realization of love. . . .

Trust firmly in your luck, cling to your happiness, and dare to take risks.

Develop your legitimate strangeness.

To be a poet is to have an appetite for a certain anxiety which, when tasted among the swirling sum of things existent or forfeit, causes, as the taste dies, joy.

How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.

Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.

What comes into the world to disturb nothing merits neither attention nor patience

Imagination consists in expelling from reality several incomplete persons, and then using the magic and subversive powers of desire to bring them back in the form of one entirely satisfying presence.

How can we live without the unknown before us?

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.

Each act is virgin, even the repeated ones.

It is not whether your words or actions are tough or gentle; it is the spirit behind your actions and words that announces your inner state.

To be a poet is to have an appetite for a certain anxiety which, when tasted among the swirling sum of things existent or forfeit, causes, as the taste dies, joy.

For an inheritance to be really great, the hand of the defunct must not be seen.

Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.

How can we live without the unknown before us?

Man is able to do what he is unable to imagine. His head trails a wake through the galaxy of the absurd.

What can be seductive about the eternal nothing is that the finest day is indifferently this one or any other like it.

How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.

A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.

I believe in the magic and authority of words.

Develop your legitimate strangeness.

What comes into the world to disturb nothing merits neither attention nor patience

A poem is the realization of love. . . .

Imagination consists in expelling from reality several incomplete persons, and then using the magic and subversive powers of desire to bring them back in the form of one entirely satisfying presence.

Trust firmly in your luck, cling to your happiness, and dare to take risks.