Eugene Ionesco

“Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.”

“The critic should describe, and not prescribe.”

“Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay, you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language but in their behavior as well.”

“My plays have been performed before children, workers, and peasants, and they have well understood the meaning of my theatre. What is needed for people to watch my theatre is a freshness and openness of mind.”

“A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.”

“Art goes beyond politics. Even if there are writers who are involved in politics, eventually, in one or two centuries, it's not their politics which is going to count, but the fact of having given life to feelings, of having created characters and made a living work of art.”

“When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.”

“Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.”

“No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.”

“A civil servant doesn't make jokes.”

“I've always been suspicious of collective truths.”

“You can only predict things after they have happened.”

“Shakespeare was the great one before us. His place was between God and despair.”

“The artist can be above political parties, he can belong in a political party, he can act in politics.”

“Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.”

“All theatre is absurd.”

“I have the vanity to think that every play I have written is different from the previous ones. Yet, even though they are written in a different way, they all deal with the same themes, the same preoccupations. 'Exit the King' is also 'The Bald Soprano.'”

“Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual needs.”

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

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.”