Top Eugene Ionesco Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Eugene Ionesco Biography

Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian: [e.uˈd͡ʒen i.oˈnesku] ( listen); 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and one of the foremost figures of the French Avant-garde theatre. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict the solitude and insignificance of human existence in a tangible way.

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Eugene Ionesco Quotes

Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.

Dislocates, Drama, Exaggeration, Lying, Reality, Writing

Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth.

Course, Courses, Everything, Truth, Unsayable, Words

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.

Course, Tribe, Tribes, Use, Words, Writing

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.

Bid, Life, Miss, Missing, Sake, Way

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.

Death, Heart, Ties, Born, Fear

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.

Aviation, Bleriot, Day, Dream, Mean, Reality

I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a will to renewal. This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of crises - of rupture, repudiation and resistance. When there is no crisis, there is stagnation, petrifaction and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.

Art, Believe, History, Moment, Resistance

When silence confronts us, the question to which there is no answer rings out in the silence. That ultimate "why," that great "why" is like a light that blots out everything, but a blinding light; nothing more can be made out.

Blinding, Everything, Light, Philosophical, Silence, Ultimate

I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.

Dream, Fall, Waste, Dreams, Falling

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

Dream, Dreams, Ideologies, Inspiring, Separate, Teacher

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

Critic, Critics, Describe, Prescribe, Should

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.

Ideology, Live, Philosophy, Real, Religion, Thinking

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.

Away, Memories, Person, Suffering, Though, Voice

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

Dangerous, Mediocrity, Writer, Writing

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.

Dream, Fall, Answers, Asleep, Revealing

We have not the time to take our time.

Our Time, Time, Take

Many people have delusions of grandeur but you're deluded by triviality.

Illusions Of Grandeur, People, Delusions Of Grandeur, Grandeur, Delusions

Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.

Astonishing, Childhood, Longer, Moments, Things

It's when I am fully conscious that I ask questions.

Ask, Asks, Conscious, Fully, Philosophical

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.

Men, Expression, Cities, City, Oppression

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