Quotations from Ionesco

"I hope for the final victory of the forces of good." (Le Figaro, December 3, 1993.)

"Everyday life is a gray blanket, hidden beneath is the virginity of the world." (Bekenntnisse,  after conversations recorded by Claude Bonnefoy , Arche, 1969, page 27.)

"As a great critique asked me why I was not serious, I replied that the literature itself was not serious and that I was too serious for taking it too seriously." (Qoute from "Découvertes")

"Imagination is no excuse. Imagining something, that is to build a world, to create  a world." (Bekenntnisse, after conversations recorded by Claude Bonnefoy, Arche, 1969, page 84.)

"What is aging good for?" (Eugène Ionesco's last thoughts to be published in Le Figaro vom March 14, 1994, two weeks before his death.)

"I beg 'I do not know who' - I hope: Jesus Christ." (Last words on the tombstone of Eugène Ionesco, at Montparnasse cemetery.)

"Not to think like the others brings you in an unpleasant situation. Not to think like the others, simply means that you think..." (Introduction of "Antidotes" 1975.)

"Plays are not written by playwrights, but by future generations. I cannot predict whether my sensibility and that of future generations will match. The later generations always write a play that is based on that of the playwright, but in many ways differs from the original work."

"We are both prisoners of our cultures as of our organization, and it is now a matter to find out whether, if at all, there is a deeper truth beyond." (André Coutin: Wortmeldungen, conversations with Eugène Ionesco, p. 47)

"... in fact, I stand before this world as an opaque block and I have the impression that there is nothing, absolutely nothing I understand, and that there is nothing to understand." (André Coutin: Wortmeldungen, conversations with Eugène Ionesco, p. 74)

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."

"Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us."

"I've always been suspicious of collective truths."