Eugene Ionesco Quotes - Page 4

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• In the history of humanity there are no civilizations or cultures which fail to manifest, in one or a thousand ways, this need for an absolute that is called heaven, freedom, a miracle, a lost paradise to be regained, peace, the going beyond History... 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.... Humanity has always had a nostalgia for the freedom that is only beauty, that is only real; life, plenitude, light.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Philosophy, Real, Thinking

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• An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of government, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Men, Expression, Cities

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• A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Two, Smell, Noses

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• Shakespeare was the great one before us. His place was between God and despair.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Despair, Great Ones

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• I am told, in a dream you can only get the answer to all your questions through a dream. So in my dream, I fall asleep, and I dream, in my dream, that I'm having that absolute, revealing dream.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Dream, Fall, Answers

  "Fragments of a Journal". Book by Eugène Ionesco, 1966.

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• I am not capitulating.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Eugene Ionesco (2015). “Rhinoceros and Other Plays: Includes: The Leader; The Future Is in Eggs; It Takes All Kinds to Make a World”, p.64, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Despair, Trying, Way

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• The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Should, Critics

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• 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.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Drama, Successful, Play

  Eugene Ionesco (2015). “Amedee, The New Tenant, Victims of Duty: Three Plays”, p.79, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Beauty, Death, Causes

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

  Eugene Ionesco

  People, Brutes

  "Eugene Ionesco, The Art of Theater No. 6". Interview with Shusha Guppy, Paris Review, No. 93, www.theparisreview.org. Fall 1984.

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• 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

  Memories, Voice, Suffering

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• I am, it seems, an avant-garde dramatist. It would even seem obvious since I am present here at discussions on the avant-garde theatre. It is all entirely official. But what does the term avant-garde mean?

  Eugene Ionesco

  Mean, Theatre, Doe

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• 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

  Philosophy, Thinking, Everyday

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• Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Writing, Mediocrity, Dangerous

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• I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Dream, Mean, Reality

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• 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

  Dream, Reality, History

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• If I write a new play, my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Writing, Thinking, Views

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• Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name? ~Jack or The Submission

  Eugene Ionesco

  Names, Crime, Submission

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• The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Writing, Use, Tribes

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• Oh righteous doom, that they who make Pleasure their only end, Ordering the whole life for its sake, Miss that whereto they tend. While they who bid stern duty lead, Content to follow, they, Of duty only taking heed, Find pleasure by the way.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Missing, Way, Sake

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