Eugène Ionesco Quotes

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

Pofta de a ucide bătrani.Bătranii sunt scîrboși.Tinerii sunt mediocrii și nerozi.Tinerii mi-au fost întodeauna nesuferiți,mai ales cand eram tanăr.Curtea pe care maeștrii de gandire,umblă după clientelă,o fac tineretului,e unul din lucrurile cele mai înjositoare din cate cunosc.Cată lipsă de demnitate,ce lașitate,ce nonsens!

Lumea are nevoie să te cuprindă, pentru totdeauna, într-o definiţie simplă, scurtă şi definitivă, asupra căreia niciodată să nu revină. Iar insul este obligat să se conformeze propriei sale definiţiuni. Uneori îi place. Alteori se sufocă.

Eu nu sunt eu. Eu sunt altul. Sunt unul într-altul.

As I said, I started with poetry, and I also wrote criticism and dialogue. But I realized that I was most successful at dialogue. Perhaps 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.

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.

My heart's like a wounded beast, clawing me in its death-throes . . . My stomach's a bottomless pit, my mouth a funnel of fire. Hunger and thirst, hunger and thirst . . .

Criza limbajului

Ruptura între ființă și gandire.Gandirea,golită de ființă,se usucă,se vestejește,nu mai e gandire.Într-adevăr,gandirea e expresia ființei,coincide cu ființa.Poți vorbi fără să gandești.Pentru asta avem la dispoziție clișeele,adică automatismele.Gandirea adevărată nu poate fi decat vie.

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.

What's chivalrous about saying you've seen a rhinoceros?

It's not a certain society that seems ridiculous to me, it's mankind.

When I was born, I was almost fourteen years old. That's why I was able to understand more easily than most what it was all about.

Ne m'envoie plus ouvrir la porte. Tu as vu que c'était inutile. L'expérience nous apprend que lorsqu'on entend sonner à la porte, c'est qu'il n'y a jamais personne.

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.

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.