A paranoiac, like a poet, is born, not made. Luis Bunuel
Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese. Luis Bunuel
Even today, I’ve no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
Give me two hours a day of activity, and I’ll take the other 22 in dreams. Luis Bunuel
God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. Luis Bunuel
I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life. Luis Bunuel
I can’t help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest. Luis Bunuel
I have a soft spot for secret passageways, bookshelves that open into silence, staircases that go down into a void, and hidden safes. I even have one myself, but I won’t tell you where. At the other end of the spectrum are statistics which I hate with all my heart. Luis Bunuel
I like go to bed and get up early; in that, I am anti-Spanish. Luis Bunuel
I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of dying alone in a hotel room, with my bags open and a shooting script on the night table. I must know whose fingers will close my eyes. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
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. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you’re alone or with friends, it’s a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper? Luis Bunuel
If someone were to prove to me – right this minute – that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn’t change a single aspect of my behavior. Luis Bunuel
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!” Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
I’m still an atheist, thank God. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival. Luis Bunuel
Luis Bunuel Quotes
Mystery is the essential element of every work of art. Luis Bunuel
Nothing would disgust me more morally than winning an Oscar. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
Sex without religion is like cooking an egg without salt. Sin gives more chances to desire. Luis Bunuel
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. Luis Bunuel
The Cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate poetry so deeply. Luis Bunuel
[The cinema] is an instrument of poetry, with all that that word can imply of the sense of liberation, of subversion of reality, of the threshold of the marvellous world of the subconscious, of nonconformity with the limited society that surrounds us. Luis Bunuel
The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time. Luis Bunuel
[The surrealists’] aim was not to establish a glorious place for themselves in the annals of art and literature, but to change the world, to transform life itself. This was our essential purpose, but one good look around is evidence enough of our failure…Like the earth itself, devoured by monumental dreams, we were nothing. Luis Bunuel
Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries. Luis Bunuel
To provoke, or sustain, a reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of the dry martini. Luis Bunuel
You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all… Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing. Luis Bunuel