Best 43 quotes of Luis Bunuel on MyQuotes

Age is something that doesn't matter unless you're a cheese

A paranoiac, like a poet, is born, not made.

A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I'd love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

I am an atheist, thanks be to God.

I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.

I can't help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.

If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and foul.

I find it [science] analytical, pretentious and superficial-largely because it does not address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox-in other words,-all the things I love the most.

If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'

If the devil were to offer me a resurgence of what is commonly called virility, I'd decline. ''Just keep my liver and lungs in good working order,'' I'd reply, ''so I can go on drinking and smoking!''

If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

I'm still an atheist, thank God.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of work does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, because you've heard the call, you've got a vocation - that's ennobling! We should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno - I don't work. And I don't care if they hang me, I won't work! Yet I'm alive! I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!

I think films are perishable, because they depend too much on technology, which advances too quickly and the films become old-fashioned, antiques. What I hope for is that technology advances to the point that films in the future will depend on a little pill which you take; then you sit in the dark, and from your eyes you project the film you want to see on a blank wall.

I would give my life for a man who is looking for the truth. But I would gladly kill a man who thinks that he has found the truth.

Like the majority of deaf people, I don't like blind people much.

Luis Bunuel's two semishort surrealist hand grenades (cowritten in varying degrees with Salvador Dali) make a double bill that can restore your faith in the subversions of youth. Pure Spanish-Parisian piss and vinegar.

Mystery is the basic element of all works of art.

Mystery is the essential element of every work of art.

Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar.

Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

Refuse any image that could have a rational meaning or any memory or culture

Repeat, over and over again, in case anyone forgets it or believes the contrary, that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

Salvador Dalí seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman's shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door.

Thank God, I am still an atheist.

Thank God I'm an atheist.

The bar... is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable-and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a client that doesn't like to talk.

The Cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate poetry so deeply

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.

Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.

Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese

As inexplicable as the accidents that set it off, our imagination is a crucial privilege. I've tried my whole life simply to accept the images that present themselves to me without trying to analyze them. I remember when we were shooting That Obscure Object of Desire in Seville and I suddenly found myself telling Fernando Rey, at the end of a scene, to pick up a big sack filled with tools lying on a bench, sling it over his shoulder, and walk away. The action was completely irrational, yet it seemed absolutely right to me. Still, I was worried about it, so I shot two versions of the scene: one with the sack, one without. But during the rushes the following day, the whole crew agreed that the scene was much better with the sack. Why? I can't explain it, and I don't enjoy rummaging around in the cliches of psychoanalysis.

Bound, elbow to elbow, darkness and night entered the dwelling.

But that the white eye-lid of the screen reflect its proper light, the Universe would go up in flames.

De todas as pessoas que conheci, Federico vem em primeiro lugar. Não falo nem de seu teatro nem de sua poesia, falo dele. A obra-prima era ele. Parece inclusive difícil imaginar alguém comparável. Quer ao piano imitando Chopin, quer improvisando uma pantomima, um esquete teatral, era irresistível. Podia ler qualquer coisa, a beleza sempre jorrava de seus lábios. Ele tinha a paixão, a alegria, a juventude. Era uma labareda. Quando o conheci, na Residência dos Estudantes, eu era um atleta provinciano bem tacanho. Pela força da nossa amizade, ele me transformou, me fez conhecer outro mundo. Devo a ele mais do que consigo dizer. Seus restos mortais nunca foram encontrados. Lendas circularam sobre sua morte, e Dalí – de um jeito bem ignóbil – chegou a falar em crime homossexual, o que é totalmente absurdo. Na realidade, Federico morreu porque era poeta. Nessa época, do outro lado, ouvia-se gritar: “Morte à inteligência!

I also remember being struck by de Sade's will, in which he asked that his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hope that humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I'd like to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremonies are not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men. Long live forgetfulness, I've always said—the only dignity I see is in oblivion.

One of the greatest tragedies in my life is my deafness, for it's been over twenty years now since I've been able to hear notes. When I listen to music it's as if the letters in a text were changing places with one another, rendering the words unintelligible and muddying the lines. I'd consider my old age redeemed if my hearing were to come back, for music would be the gentlest opiate, calming my fears as I move toward death. In any case, I suppose the only chance I have for that kind of miracle involves nothing short of a visit to Lourdes.

What am I to God? Nothing, a murky shadow. My passage on this earth is too rapid to leave any traces; it counts for nothing in space or in time. God really doesn't pay any attention to us, so even if he exists, it's as if he didn't. My form of atheism, however, leads inevitably to an acceptance of the inexplicable. Mystery is inseparable from chance, and our whole universe is a mystery. Since I reject the idea of a divine watchmaker (a notion even more mysterious than the mystery it supposedly explains), then I must consent to live in a kind of shadowy confusion. And insofar as no explication, even the simplest, works for everyone, I've chosen my mystery. At least it keeps my moral freedom intact.