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Nothing makes me more pessimistic than the obligation not to be pessimistic.

Eugene Ionesco

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Eugene Ionesco
Age: 84 †
Born: 1909
Born: November 26
Died: 1994
Died: March 28
Diarist
Dramatist
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Stanwood
Washington
Ionesco
Eugen Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco
Pessimistic
Obligation
Makes
Nothing

More quotes by Eugene Ionesco

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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.
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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?
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Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.
Eugene Ionesco
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It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
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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.
Eugene Ionesco
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The critic should describe, and not prescribe.
Eugene Ionesco
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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.
Eugene Ionesco
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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?
Eugene Ionesco
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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.
Eugene Ionesco
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Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
Eugene Ionesco
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All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.
Eugene Ionesco
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We haven't the time to take out time.
Eugene Ionesco
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The Arts are man's most useless ... and essential ... activity.
Eugene Ionesco
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Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual needs.
Eugene Ionesco
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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.
Eugene Ionesco
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A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.
Eugene Ionesco
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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.
Eugene Ionesco
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I've always been suspicious of collective truths.
Eugene Ionesco
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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.
Eugene Ionesco
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God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don't feel so well myself.
Eugene Ionesco