Eugene Ionesco Quotes

Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason," Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie. "You're forgetting the Little Prince," Polly reminded him. "Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act," snapped Sir Godfrey.

I think I started out trying to be very objective about the flow of the play.

All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.

I would like to write a play.

The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action.

I think that some of these plays are lost in this new horror called development, which is a place for dramaturgs to say "let me tell you what your play means," and the life gets sucked out of a play.

The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays.

All plays are social comment to one extent or another.

Focus on the play like it has a history and a life of its own.

I'm a playwright. All I care about is the play being good.

The correct unit of study is not the play; it is the scene.

It's the function of a playwright to write. Some playwrights write a large number of plays, some write a small number.

My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot hath many changes; every day Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play

You have to be so confident and so gifted to fill five minutes of nothing at the very beginning of a play before even a word is uttered.

For me as an actor, it's absolutely so thrilling to hear anybody talk about the character that I play.

I'm sure there are some good dramaturgs but I've never worked with one.

I love going to plays. There's a subconscious side to it, obviously-some people like to be spanked for XYZ psychological reasons, and I like to go to plays, and I can't entirely explain why.

Pitching. You're pitching yourself constantly which is probably why there are so many plays about sales. I think also it's like life.

To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage.

There was a play that was written by who I think is America's greatest playwright, and he wrote a small part in it for me. It was going to open in Chicago, and then go to New York. But then, he died. It was Arthur Miller. That was the reason I turned Lost down.

[When you write a play] you walk into a forest without a knife, without a compass. But . . . if you have a sense of geography, you find that you're clearing a path and getting to the right place.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

Sort of what you do in drama school when asked to play something way out of your reach. Anyway, we used to laugh a lot about that. I used to say I'm not going to act old, Penelope. I'll just be myself.

Did I play my role well? If so, then applause, because the comedy is finished!

As I see it, a successful story of any kind should be almost like hypnosis: You fascinate the reader with your first sentence, draw them in further with your second sentence and have them in a mild trance by the third. Then, being careful not to wake them, you carry them away up the back alley of your narrative and when they are hopelessly lost within the story, having surrendered themselves to it, you do them terrible violence with a softball bag and then lead them whimpering to the exit on the last page. Believe me, they'll thank you for it.