Eugene Ionesco Quotes
Quote 1. - “Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of “déjà vu,” when you are used to existence, you become an adult.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 2. - “I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 3. - “Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 4. - “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.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 5. - “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.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 6. - “You’ve always made the mistake of being yourself.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 7. - “You can only predict things after they have happened.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 8. - “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 9. - “Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 10. - “For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 11. - “There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to ”realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have ‘’succeeded,” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is ”realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 12. - “A person who has not completely lost the memory of paradise, even though it is a faint one, will suffer endlessly. He will feel the call of the essential world, will hear the voice that comes from so far away that one cannot find out where it comes from, a voice that cannot guide him.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 13. - “A civil servant doesn’t make jokes.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 14. - “Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.” Eugene Ionesco
Quote 15. - “A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.” Eugene Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco was born on November 26th 1909 in Slatina, Romania. His mother had french origins and after Eugene’s birth they settled in Paris. He returned to Romania in May 1922 together with his sister. He learnt Romanian and attended the college Sfântul Sava (Saint Sava) in Bucharest and eventually passed the baccalaureate at the secondary school in Craiova in 1928. He started his career as a poet in 1928 by wrinting “Bilete de papagal” (Parrot-notes) which was published in a local magazine. In March 1945 he moved to Paris with his family and started to write plays. His work was highly appreciated by critics worldwide. He died March, 28th 1994 and was burried in Montparnasse Cemetery.