Arthur Adamov Quotes

• Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.

  Arthur Adamov

  Pleasure, Passive

  Arthur Adamov (1962). “Two Plays: Professor Taranne, Translated by Peter Meyer, and Ping Pong, Translated by Derek Prouse”

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  Play, World, Invisible

  7 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Adamov

  Knowledge, Use, Neurosis

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Names, Suffering, Firsts

  5 Copy quote

• The reason why Absurdist plays take place in No Man's Land with only two characters is primarily financial.

  Arthur Adamov

  Funny, Humor, Character

  1962 Speech at Edinburgh,13 Sep.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Heart, Men, Echoes

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  God, Kings, Mean

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Beautiful, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Things always happen in series.

  Arthur Adamov

  Happens, Series

  Arthur Adamov (1962). “Two Plays: Professor Taranne, Translated by Peter Meyer, and Ping Pong, Translated by Derek Prouse”

  6 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Adamov

  Long, Want, Misery

  Arthur Adamov (1962). “Two Plays: Professor Taranne, Translated by Peter Meyer, and Ping Pong, Translated by Derek Prouse”

  7 Copy quote

• It is nasty when you're playing in someone else's house to point out that they don't have enough balls.

  Arthur Adamov

  House, Balls, Nasty

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  School, Knows, Primaries

  4 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Adamov

  Religious, Matter, Crisis

  4 Copy quote

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