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.

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

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

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.

A civil servant doesn't make jokes.

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

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.

I have the vanity to think that every play I have written is different from the previous ones. Yet, even though they are written in a different way, they all deal with the same themes, the same preoccupations. 'Exit the King' is also 'The Bald Soprano.'

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

Art goes beyond politics. Even if there are writers who are involved in politics, eventually, in one or two centuries, it's not their politics which is going to count, but the fact of having given life to feelings, of having created characters and made a living work of art.

Living is abnormal.

I was born near Bucharest, but my parents came to France a year later. We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores - its anti-Semitism for example.