Quotes from Jean Anouilh

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.

Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.

The garden was still asleep. I caught it unawares. A garden that hasn't yet begun to think about people. Beautiful.

What is this mania to love someone all one's life ? Why should we?

What will my happiness be like? What kind of happy woman will Antigone grow into? What base things will she have to do, day after day, in order to snatch her own little scrap of happiness? Tell me – who will she have to lie to? Smile at? Sell herself to? Who will she have to avert her eyes from, and leave to die?

It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout.

Rien n'est vrai que ce qu'on ne dit pas...

ANTIGONE: Tell me the truth! I beg you to tell me the truth! When you think about me, when it strikes you suddenly that I am going to belong to you?do you have the feeling that?that a great empty space is being hollowed out inside you, that there is something inside you that is just?dying? HAEMON: Yes, I do, I do.

Pas envie de vivre... Qui se levait la première, le matin, rien que pour sentir l'air froid sur sa peau nue? Qui se couchait la dernière seulement quand elle n'en pouvait plus de fatigue, pour vivre encore un peu de la nuit? Qui pleurait déjà toute petite, en pensant qu'il y avait tant de petites bêtes, tant de brins d'herbe dans le pré et qu'on ne pouvait pas tous les prendre?

Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way.

Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.

I like reality. It tastes like bread.

Our entire life, with our fine moral code and our precious freedom, consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.

The object of art is to give life shape.

Life is a child playing round your feet, a tool you hold firmly in your grip, a bench you sit down upon in the evening, in your garden.

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.

Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.

Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.

We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck and ... the house is never burgled and the ship never goes down.

Every man thinks god is on his side.

Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.

Life consists of nothing more than the happiness we can get out of it.

Don't make the mistake of believing it's enough to reproduce the realities of life.... The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.