ARTHUR ADAMOV QUOTES

absurdist playwright (1908-1970)

From whatever point he starts, whatever path he follows, modern man comes to the same conclusion: behind its visible appearances, life hides a meaning that is eternally inaccessible to penetration by the spirit that seeks for its discovery, caught in the dilemma of being aware that it is impossible to find it, and yet also impossible to renounce the hopeless quest.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

"Le refus", L'Heure Nouvelle

Tags: life, absurdism


A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

La Parodie, L'Invasion

Tags: theatre, writing


The reason why most absurdist plays take place in a no man's land with only two characters is mainly financial.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, Woorden

Tags: absurdism


Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

Ping Pong

Tags: pleasure


We are accused of pessimism, as though pessimism were but one among a number of possible attitudes, as if man were capable of choosing between two alternatives.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

"Une fin et un commencement", L'Heure Nouvelle

Tags: pessimism


The only courageous act is to speak in the first person.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, Woorden


Misery's fine -- as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

Ping Pong

Tags: misery


The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything.... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

The Confession

Tags: God


Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

The Confession

Tags: language, understanding


It remains open to question whether anything that confines itself to the human sphere could ever attain anything but the subhuman.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, The Theatre of the Absurd

Tags: humanity


This peculiar method of work, paradoxically enough, saved me. Once I was sure that, as usual, I should be able to show the identity of all human destiny ... I found myself free to make the characters act, to create situations.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, The Theatre of the Absurd

Tags: writing


I know I earn less at my primary school than you do, but I don't have to work as hard at my primary school.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

Ping Pong

Tags: work


It was Strindberg, or more exactly, A Dream Play, that incited me to write for the theater.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, European Writers: The Romantic Century

Tags: August Strindberg


Things always happen in series.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

Professor Taranne


The only thing to know is how to use your neurosis.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, The Celestial Fortune Cookie


The crisis of our time is essentially a religious crisis. It is a matter of life or death.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

"Assignation", L'Heure Nouvelle

Tags: religion


Uneven! Easy to say! As if you could always go straight to the point!

ARTHUR ADAMOV

Professor Taranne


Theatre as I conceive it is wholly and absolutely tied to performance. I think that performance is only the projection to the senses of situations and images.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

attributed, Roger Blin and Twentieth Century Playwrights

Tags: theatre


What is there? I know first of all that I am. But who am I? All I know of myself is that I suffer. And if I suffer it is because at the origin of myself there is mutilation, separation. I am separated. What I am separated from -- I cannot name it. But I am separated.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

The Confession

Tags: suffering


Everything happens as though I were only one of the particular existences of some great incomprehensible and central being.... Sometimes this great totality of life appears to me so dramatically beautiful that it plunges me into ecstasy. But more often it seems like a monstrous beast that penetrates and surpasses me and which is everywhere, within me and outside me.... And terror grips and envelops me more powerfully from moment to moment.... My only way out is to write, to make others aware of it, so as not to have to feel all of it alone, to get rid of however small a portion of it.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

The Confession

Tags: life