A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.

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.

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.

You can only predict things after they have happened.

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

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

Living is abnormal.

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

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

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've always been suspicious of collective truths.

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

A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.

A civil servant doesn't make jokes.

We have not the time to take our time.

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

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

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

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

All theatre is absurd.

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.

Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.

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.'

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.

Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay, you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language but in their behavior as well.

When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.

Woe betide the man who refuses to conform.

Boredom flourishes too when you feel safe. Its a symptom of security.

Describe a circle stroke its back and it turns vicious.

Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.

A civil servant doesn't make jokes.

Almost everyone will find something in our services worth paying for.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

What a year to live in! Worth all other times ever known in our history or any other.

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

Every day some new fact comes to light - some new obstacle which threatens the gravest obstruction. I suppose this is the reason which makes the game so well worth playing.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

The situation in Iraq will be long, it will be expensive and it will be difficult. But in the end, Iraq will very much be worth it.

I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.

I won't apologize for ticket prices. I think we're well worth it. We consider ourselves in the elite touring acts, like the Stones, Elton John, Paul McCartney.

A book is worth a few francs; we Germans can afford to destroy those. We all may not appreciate artistic merit, but cash value is another matter.

That would be getting up at 5 am... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.

By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.

I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. I'm worth more than that.