Eugéne Ionesco: Trending quotes

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Eugéne Ionesco: 118 quotes2 likes

“Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name!”

Eugéne Ionesco

Jacques from Jacques or the Submission (1955)

“I am not capitulating.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Berenger's last sentence from Rhinoceros (1959)

“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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Notes and Counter-Notes (1964), as translated by Donald Watson, p. 33

“There are now many invisible people on stage.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Stage directions in The Chairs (1952)

“You can stay in society and be alone, as long as you can be detached from the world. This is why I don’t think I have ever gone for the easy option or done things that were expected of me.”

Eugéne Ionesco

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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

The Paris Review interview (1984)

“Logician: A cat has four paws.
Old Gentleman: My dog had four paws.
Logician: Then it's a cat.
Old Gentleman: So my dog is a cat?
Logician: And the contrary is also true.”

Eugéne Ionesco Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros (1959)

“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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Victimes du Devoir [Victims of Duty] (1953)

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

Eugéne Ionesco

The Paris Review interview (1984)

“It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think.”

Eugéne Ionesco

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 468; also in The Quantum Dice (1993) by Leonid Ivanovich Ponomarev, p. 50

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

Eugéne Ionesco

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

“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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

le canular refers to hoaxes, humorous deceptions. -->
The Paris Review interview (1984)

“Good men make good rhinoceroses, unfortunately.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Berenger from Rhinoceros (1959)

“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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

The Paris Review interview (1984)

“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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

The Paris Review interview (1984)

“God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don’t feel so well myself.”

Eugéne Ionesco

As quoted in Jewish American Literature : A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318

“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.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Candor from Macbett (1972)

“Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.”

Eugéne Ionesco

Attributed in The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011) edited by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross