Eugene Ionesco
Dramatist
1909-11-26
Quotes by Eugene Ionesco
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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.'
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I've always been suspicious of collective truths.
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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.
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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.
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Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.
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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.
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Woe betide the man who refuses to conform.
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I was born near Bucharest, but my parents came to France a year later. We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores - its anti-Semitism for example.
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If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art.
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A really conscientious doctor ought to die with his patient. The captain goes down with his ship.
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You've always made the mistake of being yourself.
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Describe a circle, stroke its back, and it turns vicious.
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A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.
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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.
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It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
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