166 Quotes by Eugene Ionesco

Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay, you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language but in their behavior as well.

Often, alas, the most detestable kind of bourgeois is the anti-bourgeois kind of bourgeois.

Woe betide the man who refuses to conform.

Culture cannot be separated from politics. The arts, philosophy and metaphysics, religion and the sciences, constitute culture. Politics are the science or art of organizing our relationships to allow for the development of life in society.

All theatre is absurd.

The artist can be above political parties, he can belong in a political party, he can act in politics.

When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

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.