Eugène Ionesco - People Quotes

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Beckett shows death; his people are in dustbins or waiting for God. (Beckett will be cross with me for mentioning God, but never mind.) Similarly, in my play The New Tenant, there is no speech, or rather, the speeches are given to the Janitor. The Tenant just suffocates beneath proliferating furniture and objects — which is a symbol of death. There were no longer words being spoken, but images being visualized. We achieved it above all by the dislocation of language. … Beckett destroys language with silence. I do it with too much language, with characters talking at random, and by inventing words.

Eugène Ionesco
People always try to find base motives behind every good action. We are afraid of pure goodness and of pure evil.

Eugène Ionesco
I thought that it was strange to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me on the contrary that it was abnormal for people not to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously. Perhaps it's because everyone, all the others, are convinced in some unformulated, irrational way that one day everything will be made clear. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me.

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

Eugène Ionesco
To introduce people to a different world, to encounter the miracle of being, that is important. When I write The train arrives at the station, it is banal, but at the same time sensational, because it is invented.

Eugène Ionesco
Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.

Eugène Ionesco
It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think.

Eugène Ionesco
There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.

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

Eugène Ionesco