Eugène Ionesco > Quotes

“Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“People who don't read are brutes.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“That's how we stay young these days: murder and suicide.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Man With Bags

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. ”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“In the history of humanity there are no civilizations or cultures which fail to manifest, in one or a thousand ways, this need for an absolute that is called heaven, freedom, a miracle, a lost paradise to be regained, peace, the going beyond History... There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.... Humanity has always had a nostalgia for the freedom that is only beauty, that is only real; life, plenitude, light.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc Socrate est un chat.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Rhinocéros

“I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Man With Bags

“Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name?

~Jack or The Submission”
― Eugène Ionesco, The Bald Soprano and The Lesson: Two Plays -- A New Translation

“A work of art really is above all an adventure of the mind.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“I long for solitude and yet I cannot stand it.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?



DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros? 



BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.



DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ... 



BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!


DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that. 



BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ... 



DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism. 



BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo. 



DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that.

BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!



DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ... 



BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory?”
― Eugène Ionesco, Three Plays: Rhinoceros / The Chairs / The Lesson

“DAISY: I never knew you were such a realist-I thought you were more poetic. Where's your imagination? There are many sides to reality. Choose the one that's best for you. Escape into the world of imagination.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros and Other Plays

“When I was born, I was almost fourteen years old. That's why I was able to understand more easily than most what it was all about.”
― Eugène Ionesco, The Bald Soprano and Other Plays

“What's chivalrous about saying you've seen a rhinoceros?”
― Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros and Other Plays

“إنه يكتب لأنه يتساءل عن ماهية العالم, أو لأنه يريد أن يبرر وجوده, أو لأنه يرغب فى تأدية رسالة أخلاقية أو سياسية.. ولكنها كلها علل وأعذار تخفى وراءها باعثا أعمق لا يستطيع الفكر إدراك كنهه. وربما لم يكن هذا الباعث سوى شهوة الخلق.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“She has regular features but yet one could not say that she was pretty. She is too big and too stout. Her features are not regular and yet one could say that she is very pretty. She is too small and too thin. She's a voice teacher”
― Eugène Ionesco

“We need to be virtually bludgeoned into detachment from our daily lives, our habits and mental laziness, which conceal from us the strangeness of the world. Without a fresh virginity of mind, without a new and healthy awareness of existential reality, there can be no theatre and no art either; the real must be in a way dislocated, before it can be re-integrated.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counternotes

“It is true that all authors have tried to make propaganda. The great ones are those who failed, who have gained access, consciously or not, to a deeper and more universal reality.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counternotes

“I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, tan every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counternotes

“He would say ect. instead of ect., and thus instead of ect., instead of ect. and thus and so forth!”
― Eugène Ionesco

“La pénicilline et la lutte contre l'alcoolisme sont bien plus efficaces que les changements de gouvernements.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Prenez un cercle, caressez-le, il deviendra vicieux.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Politicians are either there or here or totally at home. Their finitude is more than sufficient unto itself. I don’t mean to imply that I’m any better than they which does not mean that they are any better than I. Which doesn’t mean anything at all.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Je meurs, vous entendez, je veux dire que je meurs, je n'arrive pas à le dire, je ne fais que de la littérature.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Le Roi se meurt