Eugène Ionesco quotes - page 2

It was quite fashionable to poke fun at Hugo. You remember Gide's "Victor Hugo is the greatest French poet, alas!” or Cocteau's "Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo.” Anyway, I hated rhetoric and eloquence. I agreed with Verlaine, who said, "You have to get hold of eloquence and twist its neck off!” Nonetheless, it took some courage. Nowadays it is common to debunk great men, but it wasn't then. (Eugène Ionesco)
None of us would have written as we do without surrealism and dadaism. By liberating the language, those movements paved the way for us. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
We are all Victims of Duty. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I have no ideas before I write a play. I have them when I have finished it ... I believe that aritistic creation is spontaneous. It is for me. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
There are now many invisible people on stage. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
You can stay in society and be alone, as long as you can be detached from the world. This is why I don't think I have ever gone for the easy option or done things that were expected of me. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
We exist on several different planes, and when we said nothing had any reason we were referring to the psychological and social plane. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Logician: A cat has four paws. Old Gentleman: My dog had four paws. Logician: Then it's a cat. Old Gentleman: So my dog is a cat? Logician: And the contrary is also true. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I didn't mean you were stupid. It's just that you're not logical, which isn't the same thing at all. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
My work has been essentially a dialogue with death, asking him, "Why? Why?” So only death can silence me. Only death can close my lips. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
The Pataphysique is not dead. It lives on in the minds of certain men, even if they are not aware of it. It has gone into "occultation,” as we say, and will come back again one day. (Eugène Ionesco)
The more you make revolutions, the worse it gets. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
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. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Pray to the I don't-know-who I hope : Jesus Christ. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
People who don't read are brutes. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
That's not it. That's not it at all. You always have a tendency to add. But one must be able to subtract too. It's not enough to integrate, you must also disintegrate. That's the way life is. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
People always try to find base motives behind every good action. We are afraid of pure goodness and of pure evil. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Every work of art (unless it is a psuedo-intellectualist work, a work already comprised in some ideology that it merely illustrates, as with Brecht) is outside ideology, is not reducible to ideology. Ideology circumscribes without penetrating it. The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it fertilizes them. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
A man with a soul is not like every other man. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual needs. (Eugène Ionesco)
Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Shakespeare was the great one before us. His place was between God and despair. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
The critic should describe, and not prescribe. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well. View quote
Eugène Ionesco