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Eugène Ionesco Quotes

1909–1994 France

Eugène Ionesco (26 November 1909 – 29 March 1994), born Eugen Ionescu, was a Romanian playwright and dramatist, one of the foremost playwrights of Theatre of the Absurd.

France
Academics
Playwrights

Also known as: Eugene Ionesco, Ionesco, Eugene, Ionesco, Eugène, Eugen Ionescu

Random Eugène Ionesco quote

46 quotes

Philology always leads to crime.

The Lesson (1951)

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.

Notes and Counter-Notes (1964)

I didn't mean you were stupid. It's just that you're not logical, which isn't the same thing at all.

Amédée from Amédée or How to Get Rid of It (1954)

Beckett shows death; his people are in dustbins or waiting for God. (Beckett will be cross with me for mentioning God, but never mind.)

The Paris Review interview (1984)

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990)

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.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

We exist on several different planes, and when we said nothing had any reason we were referring to the psychological and social plane.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

None of us would have written as we do without surrealism and dadaism. By liberating the language, those movements paved the way for us.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

The most implacable enemies of culture — Rimbaud, Lautréamont, dadaism, surrealism — end up being assimilated and absorbed by it.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

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.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

We are all Victims of Duty.

Victimes du Devoir [Victims of Duty (1953)

Why was I born if it wasn't forever?

Pray to the I don't-know-who
I hope : Jesus Christ.

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.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

It won’t matter to me at all whether the Church canonizes him or not. The important thing is that such a man existed.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

Béranger represents the modern man. He is a victim of totalitarianism — of both kinds of totalitarianism, of the Right and of the Left.

The Paris Review interview (1984)

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. That's philosophy. That's science. That's progress, civilization.

The Professor in The Lesson (1951)

But History was against me. History is right, objectively speaking. I'm just a historical dead end. I hope at least that my fate will serve as an example to you all and to posterity.

Candor from Macbett (1972)

People who don’t read are brutes. It is better to write than to make war, isn’t it?

The Paris Review interview (1984)

All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers...
Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about...
Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion.

Victimes du Devoir [Victims of Duty (1953)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Eugène Ionesco (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.