Salvador Dalí

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Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.

Salvador Felip Jacint Dalí (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist.

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It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.
  • What is an elegant woman? An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and who has no hair under her arms.
    • The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942)
  • It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.
    • Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 12
  • Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
    • People (27 September 1976)
  • The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
    • Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1987) by Pierre Cabanne
  • In the subconscious you fuck ugly people, never beautiful, because the libido always desires something repulsive.
    • Exposure (October 1990); from an interview originally conducted by Victor Bockris in 1974.
  • I like it, murder, because this is courage. It is anti-bourgeois. Murder is closer to heaven, because after becoming remords de conscience, one prays, one opens the sky, and the angels say, “Good morning!”
    • Exposure (October 1990); from an interview originally conducted by Victor Bockris in 1974.
  • Ah, UNESCO is the most garbage. Any kind of organization for the good will of the people is impossible. It is necessary for the contrary. Young people need plenty of difficulties to achieve something, you know? If you receive a little money for this, a little money for that, everything becomes mediocre, and collapses ig-no-min-i-ously!
    • Exposure (October 1990); from an interview originally conducted by Victor Bockris in 1974.
  • You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dalí spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life. Before my jail period, I was always nervous, anxious. I didn’t know if I should make a drawing, or perhaps make a poem, or go to the movies or the theatre, or catch a girl, or play with the boys. The people put me in jail, and my life became divine. Tremendous!
    • Exposure (October 1990); from an interview originally conducted by Victor Bockris in 1974.
  • Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.
    • As quoted in Smithsonian magazine. Variants:
      Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being Salvador Dalí — and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?
      Every morning when I awake, the greatest of joys is mine: that of being Salvador Dalí.

[edit] About Salvador Dalí

The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!
  • The art of Salvador Dalí, an extreme metaphor at a time when only the extreme will do, constitutes a body of prophecy about ourselves unequaled in accuracy since Freud's "Civilization And Its Discontents". Voyeurism, self-disgust, the infantile basis of our fears and longings, and our need to pursue our own psychopathologies as a game — these diseases of the psyche Dali has diagnosed with dismaying accuracy. His paintings not only anticipate the psychic crisis which produced our glaucous paradise, but document the uncertain pleasures of living within it. The great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century — sex and paranoia — preside over his life, as over ours.
    • J. G. Ballard, "Introduction" to Diary of a Genius (1974) by Salvador Dalí

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