Date: 1900, 1901

"We move amidst generalities and symbols, as within a tilt-yard in which our force is effectively pitted against other forces; and fascinated by action, tempted by it, for our own good, on to the field it has selected, we live in a zone midway between things and ourselves, externally to things, e...

— Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941)

Date: 1927

"As for the inner book of unknown symbols (symbols carved in relief they might have been, which my attention, as it explored my unconscious, groped for and stumbled against and followed the contours of, like a diver exploring the ocean-bed), if I tried to read them, no one could help me with any ...

— Proust, Marcel (1871-1922)

Date: 1927

"This book, more laborious to decipher than any other, is also the only one which has been dictated to us by reality, the only one of which the 'impression' has been printed in us by reality itself."

— Proust, Marcel (1871-1922)

Date: 1931

“Yes, let them all slip back once again into that closed world where, like their excreta, only what is organically and sensuously demonstrable is valid, let them feed off the routine detritus and mental excrement of what they call reality, for my part I will continue to regard The Monk a...

— Artaud, Antonin (1896-1948)

Date: 1947, 1958

"Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited"

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1947, 1958

"Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion."

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1947, 1958

"Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?"

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1952

De la partie la plus noire de mon âme, à travers la zone hachurée me monte ce désir d'être tout à coup blanc [Out of the blackest part of my soul, through the zone of hachures, surges up this desire to be suddenly white].

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: 1952

La structure néurotique d'un individu sear justement l'élaboration, la formation, l'éclosion dans le moi de noeuds conflictuels provenant d'une part du milieu, d'autre part de la façon toute personelle dont cet individu réagit à ces influences [The neurotic structure of an individual is precisely...

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: September, 1956

Je veux saisir les choses avec l'esprit comme le pénis est saisi par le vagin. [I want to grasp things with the mind the way the penis is grasped by the vagina.]

— Duchamp, Marcel (1887-1968)