Eugène Ionesco Quotes

Poezia este destinata poeziei si nu publicului. Poetul nu are nevoie de public. Publicul confunda poezia cu sansoneta.

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

Solitude seems to oppress me. And so does the company of other people.

PUPIL: Are the roots of words square? PROFESSOR: Square or cube. That depends. PUPIL: I've got a toothache.

He would say ect. instead of ect., and thus instead of ect., instead of ect. and thus and so forth!

Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers I'd be a politician.

AMÉDÉE: Slavery has been abolished, my love . . .
MADELEINE: I’m not your love . . .
AMÉDÉE: Slaves belong to the past . . .
MADELEINE: Well, I’m a modern slave, then!

The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.

Is she still just a shadow of the shadow of herself? Is it just a leaf? Is it just the wind? Or is it just the quiver of a wish? Just the whisper of a tear down my face?

1st KEEPER: That's it. Just a sigh from her lips.

It’s a play about the life and martyrdom of a modern saint, who has just been canonized by the Church — or is it beatified? Which comes first? I’m not sure. Anyway, his name was Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole, and he died in Auschwitz. They were going to send some prisoners to a mine, where they would die of hunger and thirst. Father Kolbe offered to go instead of a man who had a wife and children and didn’t want to die. That man is still alive. … It won’t matter to me at all whether the Church canonizes him or not. The important thing is that such a man existed. -->

Dans la vie, il faut regarder par la fenêtre. (XI, 61)

"I've always been suspicious of collective truths".

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

Continuându-şi lectura, Domnul Smith, plescăie.

BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?

DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?

BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.

DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...

BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!

DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.

BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically — but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ...

DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism.

BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism — they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo.

DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that.

BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!

DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ...

BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses — are they practice or are they theory?