A civil servant doesn't make jokes.
Eugene Ionesco

A man with a soul is not like every other man.
Eugene Ionesco

A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.
Eugene Ionesco

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.
Eugene Ionesco

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.
Eugene Ionesco

Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.
Eugene Ionesco

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.
Eugene Ionesco

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.
Eugene Ionesco

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
Eugene Ionesco

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
Eugene Ionesco


Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual needs.
Eugene Ionesco

Living is abnormal.
Eugene Ionesco

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.
Eugene Ionesco

Shakespeare was the great one before us. His place was between God and despair.
Eugene Ionesco

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.
Eugene Ionesco

There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.
Eugene Ionesco

We have not the time to take our time.
Eugene Ionesco

You can only predict things after they have happened.
Eugene Ionesco