Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.
Interpretation
Childhood ends when wonder and amazement fade from our lives.
This quote by Eugene Ionesco suggests that the essence of childhood is rooted in the ability to find awe and wonder in the world around us. As we grow older and become accustomed to our environments, we often lose that innate curiosity and ability to be astonished, marking a significant transition from the innocence and exploration of childhood to the familiarity and pragmatism of adulthood.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of creativity in education, one might say, 'As Eugene Ionesco said, childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.'
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
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.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
Race, what is that? Race is a competition, somebody winning and somebody losing. Blood doesn't run in races! Come on!
All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.
Say what you want about it, Hell is story-friendly... The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. It's about what happens when the stories are over.
It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear.
This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
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