Tristan Tzara Quotes & Sayings

Always destroy what is in you. — Tristan Tzara

To make a poem, take one newspaper, one pair of scissors, snip the words one by one and put them in a bag. Shake gently, draw them out at random, and copy them conscientiously ... DADA est mort. DADA est idiot. Vive DADA! — Tristan Tzara

Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE — Tristan Tzara

The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors. — Tristan Tzara

Nothing is more pleasant than to baffle people. The — Tristan Tzara

Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. — Tristan Tzara

Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer's skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions. — Tristan Tzara

Morality is the infusion of chocolate into the veins of all men — Tristan Tzara

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are -- an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. — Tristan Tzara

Art is not the most precious manifestation of life. Art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it. Life is far more interesting. — Tristan Tzara

There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement. — Tristan Tzara

Let us try for once not to be right. — Tristan Tzara

You'll never know why you exist, but you'll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously. — Tristan Tzara

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. — Tristan Tzara

Not the old, not the new, but the necessary. — Tristan Tzara

We have always made mistakes, but the greatest mistakes are the poems we have written. — Tristan Tzara

Thought is made in the mouth. — Tristan Tzara

and on the other side for lack of sun there is death perhaps
waiting for you in the uproar of a dazzling whirlwind with a thousand explosive arms
stretched toward you man flower passing from the seller's hands to
those of the lover and the loved
passing from the hand of one event to the other passive and sad parakeet
the teeth of doors are chattering and everything is done with
impatience to make you leave quickly
man amiable merchandise eyes open but tightly sealed
cough of waterfall rhythm projected in meridians and slices
globe spotted with mud with leprosy and blood
winter mounted on its pedestal of night poor night weak and sterile
draws the drapery of cloud over the cold menagerie
and holds in its hands as if to throw a ball
luminous number your head full of poetry — Tristan Tzara

Is it a spiral of water in the tragic gleam of a revolver, an egg, a glistening arc or the floodgate of reason, a keen ear attuned to a mineral hiss, or a turbine of algebraic formulas? (On Man Ray's first photograms, 1921.) — Tristan Tzara

Everyone dances to his own personal boomboom. — Tristan Tzara

The summit sings what is being spoken in the depths. — Tristan Tzara

But let's speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera. — Tristan Tzara

I am writing a manifesto and there's nothing I want, and yet I'm saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles. — Tristan Tzara

Art needs an operation — Tristan Tzara

In principle, I am against principles. — Tristan Tzara

I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles. — Tristan Tzara

I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way." - Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918 — Tristan Tzara

When everything that is called art was well and truly riddled with rheumatism, the photographer lit the thousands of candles whose power is contained in his flame, and the sensitive paper absorbed by degrees the blackness cut out of some ordinary object. He had invented a fresh and tender flash of lightning. — Tristan Tzara