If I write a new play, my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the fluidity of thought and perspective in the creative process.
Eugene Ionesco expresses the idea that creativity can lead to a transformation of one's beliefs and thoughts. As a writer crafts a new play, the act of creation may challenge and alter their existing viewpoints, resulting in an internal conflict where they might struggle to identify their original beliefs.
In practice
This quote can be used during a workshop on the creative process to illustrate how ideas evolve.
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.
As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.
Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.
In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.
If we believe heaven to be our country, it is better for us to transmit our wealth thither, than to retain it here, where we may lose it by a sudden removal.
To the solid ground Of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye.
The appreciation of pleasure can be the anchor of humanity.
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