Antonin Artaud Quotes

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn't believe that we were mortal.

One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.

But death we are, and death we've always been.

The only certainty is death.

[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.

It's so unfair that we should die, just because we are born.

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.

People are usually pretty hungry after a funeral. I guess it's because we all realize that time is running out and we better eat all we can. Please don't mention that to my mother.

There are two things that you have to do in life: You have to die, and you have to live until you die. The rest is up to you.

The whole motley confusion of acts, omissions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end.

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

age is nothing but death that is conscious.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

There’s an old Ritadarion saying. You’re never more alive than when you walk hand in hand with death. (Syn)

All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.

We’re beings toward death, we’re … two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.

I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

I'm being made aware of my mortality all the time.

In fact living is dying.

Man is unique in that, unlike animals, he knows he is going to die, and unlike animals he can do something about it.

To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.

One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun.

Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness.