Eugene Ionesco Quotes

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.

I think I matured quite early, but what that does mean is I have moments of complete immaturity. When I come home, I don't want to be an actor. I just want to be a kid. I barely even know what money is.

When you're physically growing up, you develop emotionally with that.

I realise I'm still a child, though I do feel older. I recently did an on-line test called 'What's Your True Age?' My result was 50-60 years old.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.'

I realise I'm still a child, though I do feel older.

I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my mortality.

When you start acting as a child, you grow up ahead of your movies.

I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived.

The difference between kitties and humans is that we are aware of our mortal condition, and the burden of consciousness is to evoke and embody and explore the coordinates of our condition.

I remember what it was like at age 6, not really understanding what was going on around me, but having all these grown-up thoughts running through my head about what I was facing, why this was happening.

When we are no longer children, we are already dead.

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.

I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a headful of brilliant frozen moments, already dangerously distorted by the wisdoms of maturity.

Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death.

I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.

A child embarrassed by his mother,” she said, “is just a child who hasn’t lived long enough.

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.

Childhood's over the moment you know you're going to die.

When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.

A species has to become pretty intellectually advanced in order to grasp the concept of death in the abstract, and to dream up the idea of immortality. Long before that (in evolutionary terms) all species with brains have the survival instinct in some form. So, I am just saying that there are many existent proofs of species that have one, but not the other.

We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.

When I was young, the early death of my father cast a shadow over me - and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one's existence.