Eugène Ionesco quotes - page 3

A nose that can see is worth two that sniff. (Eugène Ionesco)
A civil servant doesn't make jokes. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
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. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
People always try to find base motives behind every good action. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
They are miserable and they don't know why. They are puppets, undone. In short, they represent modern man. Their situation is not tragic, since it has no relation to a higher order. Instead, it's ridiculous, laughable, and derisory. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Beckett shows death; his people are in dustbins or waiting for God. (Beckett will be cross with me for mentioning God, but never mind.) View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I have always regretted having gotten involved with literature up to my neck. I would have preferred to have been a monk; but, as I said, I was torn between wanting fame and wishing to renounce the world. The basic problem is that if God exists, what is the point of literature? And if He doesn't exist, what is the point of literature? Either way, my writing, the only thing I have ever succeeded in doing, is invalidated. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Remembrance of Things Past is too long and difficult, and what is interesting is the seventh volume, Time Regained. Otherwise, Proust's work is concerned with irony, social criticism, worldliness, and the passage of time, which are not my preoccupations. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
The purpose of the Collège was the demolition of culture, even of surrealism, which they considered too organized. But make no mistake, these people were graduates of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and highly cultured. Their method was based on puns and practical jokes-le canular. There is a great tradition of puns in Anglo-Saxon literature - Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland - but not in French. So they adopted it. They believed that the science of sciences is the pataphysique and its dogma, le canular. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
My thoughts were not yet organized or coherent at that age, but I had feelings, a certain nascent [[humanism], and I found these things inadmissible. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
He understands that the world is an enormous farce, a canular played by God against man, and that he has to play God's game and laugh about it. (Eugène Ionesco)
I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
There were no longer words being spoken, but images being visualized. We achieved it above all by the dislocation of language. ... Beckett destroys language with silence. I do it with too much language, with characters talking at random, and by inventing words. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
You know, the Cathars believed that the world was not created by God but by a demon who had stolen a few technological secrets from Him and made this world - which is why it doesn't work. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I am told, in a dream ... you can only get the answer to all your questions through a dream. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
To introduce people to a different world, to encounter the miracle of being, that is important. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I let characters and symbols emerge from me, as if I were dreaming. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
The most implacable enemies of culture - Rimbaud, Lautréamont, dadaism, surrealism - end up being assimilated and absorbed by it. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Writers who try to prove something are unattractive to me, because there is nothing to prove and everything to imagine. So I let words and images emerge from within. If you do that, you might prove something in the process. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
Béranger represents the modern man. He is a victim of totalitarianism - of both kinds of totalitarianism, of the Right and of the Left. (Eugène Ionesco)
The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it fertilizes them. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I have never been to the Right, nor have I been a Communist, because I have experienced, personally, both forms of totalitarianism. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
It won't matter to me at all whether the Church canonizes him or not. The important thing is that such a man existed. View quote
Eugène Ionesco
I've always been suspicious of collective truths. View quote
Eugène Ionesco