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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

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There Is Nothing Truer

Eugene Ionesco

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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.

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You've Always Made The Mistake Of Being Yourself.

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.

Mediocrity Is More Dangerous In A Critic Than In A Writer.

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.

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.

In The Name Of Religion, One Tortures, Persecutes, Builds Pyres. In The Guise Of Ideologies, One Massacres, Tortures And Kills. In The Name Of Justice One Punishes...in The Name Of Love Of One's Country Or Of One's Race Hates Other Countries, Despises Them, Massacres Them. In The Name Of Equality And Brotherhood There Is Suppression And Torture. There Is Nothing In Common Between The Means And The End, The Means Go Far Beyond The End...ideologies And Religion... Are The Alibis Of The Means.

It's Not A Certain Society That Seems Ridiculous To Me, It's Mankind.

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?

The Critic Should Describe, And Not Prescribe.

To Tear Ourselves Away From The Everyday, From Habit, From Mental Laziness Which Hides From Us The Strangeness Of Reality, We Must Receive Something Like A Real Bludgeon Blow.

Theatre Is Simply What Cannot Be Expressed By Any Other Means; A Complexity Of Words, Movements, Gestures That Convey A Vision Of The World Inexpressible In Any Other Way.

We Haven't The Time To Take Out Time.

Logic Is A Very Beautiful Thing. As Long As It Is Not Abused.

It Isn't What People Think That Is Important, But The Reason They Think What They Think.

The End Of Childhood Is When Things Cease To Astonish Us. When The World Seems Familiar, When One Has Got Used To Existence, One Has Become An Adult.

Why Was I Born, If It Wasn't Forever?

A Man With A Soul Is Not Like Every Other Man.

Many People Have Delusions Of Grandeur But You're Deluded By Triviality.

Illusions Of Grandeur

Delusions Of Grandeur

Everything That Has Been Will Be, Everything That Will Be Is, Everything That Will Be Has Been.

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.

A Civil Servant Doesn't Make Jokes.

Only The Ephemeral Is Of Lasting Value.

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.

The Supreme Trick Of Mass Insanity Is That It Persuades You That The Only Abnormal Person Is The One Who Refuses To Join In The Madness Of Others, The One Who Tries Vainly To Resist. We Will Never Understand Totalitarianism If We Do Not Understand That People Rarely Have The Strength To Be Uncommon.

I Personally Would Like To Bring A Tortoise Onto The Stage, Turn It Into A Racehorse, Then Into A Hat, A Song, A Dragoon And A Fountain Of Water. One Can Dare Anything In The Theatre And It Is The Place Where One Dares The Least.

Realism Falls Short Of Reality. It Shrinks It, Attenuates It, Falsifies It; It Does Not Take Into Account Our Basic Truths And Our Fundamental Obsessions: Love, Death, Astonishment. It Presents Man In A Reduced And Estranged Perspective. Truth Is In Our Dreams, In The Imagination.

The More I Try To Explain Myself, The Less I Understand Myself.

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.

It's When I Am Fully Conscious That I Ask Questions.

The Human Comedy Does Not Attract Me Enough. I Am Not Entirely Of This World. I Am From Elsewhere, And It Is Worth Finding This Elsewhere Beyond The Walls...but Where Is It?

People Always Try To Find Base Motives Behind Every Good Action. We Are Afraid Of Pure Goodness And Of Pure Evil.

Nothing Makes Me More Pessimistic Than The Obligation Not To Be Pessimistic.

I Am Not Capitulating.

I'll Never Waste My Dreams By Falling Asleep. Never Again.

I've Always Been Suspicious Of Collective Truths.

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.

A Really Conscientious Doctor Ought To Die With His Patient. The Captain Goes Down With His Ship.

A Work Of Art Is Above All An Adventure Of The Mind.

Oh Words, What Crimes Are Committed In Your Name? ~jack Or The Submission

A Writer Never Has A Vacation. For A Writer, Life Consists Of Either Writing Or Thinking About Writing.

When I Was Born, I Was Almost Fourteen Years Old. That's Why I Was Able To Understand More Easily Than Most What It Was All About.

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.

Explanation Separates Us From Astonishment, Which Is The Only Gateway To The Incomprehensible.

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.

I Have No Other Pictures Of The World Apart From Those Which Express Evanescence, And Callousness, Vanity And Anger, Emptiness, Orhideous Useless Hate. Everything Has Merely Confirmed What I Had Seen And Understood In My Childhood: Futile And Sordid Fits Of Rage, Cries Suddenly Blanketed By The Silence, Shadows Swallowed Up For Ever By The Night.

Like All Revolutions, The Surrealist Revolution Was A Reversion, A Restitution, An Expression Of Vital And Indispensable Spiritual Needs.

Childhood Is Over The Moment Things Are No Longer Astonishing.

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Dreams Are Reality At Its Most Profound, And What You Invent Is Truth Because Invention, By Its Nature, Can't Be A Lie.

I Started Writing For The Theatre Because I Hated It.

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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.

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That's How We Stay Young These Days: Murder And Suicide.

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It Is Not The Answer That Enlightens, But The Question.

God Is Dead. Marx Is Dead. And I Don't Feel So Well Myself.

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Language Should Almost Break Up Or Explode In Its Fruitless Effort To Contain So Many Meanings.

There Are More Dead People Than Living. And Their Numbers Are Increasing. The Living Are Getting Rarer.

Every Work Of Art (unless It Is A Psuedo-intellectualist Work, A Work Already Comprised In Some Ideology That It Merely Illustrates, As With Brecht) Is Outside Ideology, Is Not Reducible To Ideology. Ideology Circumscribes Without Penetrating It. The Absence Of Ideology In A Work Does Not Mean An Absence Of Ideas; On The Contrary It Fertilizes Them.

Drama Lies In Extreme Exaggeration Of The Feelings, An Exaggeration That Dislocates Flat Everyday Reality.

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.

Ideologies Separate Us. Dreams And Anguish Bring Us Together.

I've Always Been Suspicious Of Collective Truths. I Think An Idea Is True When It Hasn't Been Put Into Words And That The Moment It's Put Into Words It Becomes Exaggerated. Because The Moment It's Put Into Words There's An Abuse, An Excess In The Expression Of The Idea That Makes It False.

The Arts Are Man's Most Useless ... And Essential ... Activity.

Banality Is A Symptom Of Non-communication. Men Hide Behind Their Cliches.

Boredom Flourishes Too, When You Feel Safe. It's A Symptom Of Security.

You Can Only Predict Things After They Have Happened.

A Nose That Can See Is Worth Two That Sniff.

Good Men Make Good Rhinoceroses, Unfortunately.

Shakespeare Was The Great One Before Us. His Place Was Between God And Despair.

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