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

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.

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

I did comedy and parody television in the '70s. I was a liberal Democrat, and it was a very heady year.

In large commercial cities, the money power is, I fear irresistible. It is not by open corruption that it always, or even most generally, operates.

I just really am trying, trying, all the time. But I like to be scared. I love to suddenly feel out of control.

I always have a lot of things going on because some things take years to make and others take five minutes. I like that there's always something going on. Working doesn't have such a momentous feel - like it's all or nothing.

Each victory with God can bring a reassurance once more that the ones born of God are victorious

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

I'm not a pretty boy who came to town and burst out of the gate, which is a good thing, because if I was, I probably wouldn't have been good enough then. I probably wouldn't have lasted. So I was very lucky not to be pretty.

When you make movies of based on real life, you try to exaggerate it.

I'm involved with a baroque opera company here in Italy. I write some of their booklet material, comments on operas. I also write for some baroque opera festivals because this music is my real passion.

Who cannot appreciate the smell of bacon? It smells good, but I never want to grab a bite.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

People need to look at wildlife conservation in its totality. As soon as you lose the apex predator, it has harmful consequences right down the food chain.

Humans are designed to seek comfort and order and so if they have comfort and order they tend to plant themselves even if their comfort isnt all that comfortable. And even if they secretly want for something better.

After I changed the string we picked up right where we left off - and punched back in at the same time. I don't know if this has ever been done before. The engineer sort of looked at us weird, but we got it on the first take.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

If 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself: 'Dijkstra would not have liked this', well that would be enough immortality for me.