French dramatist (1910-1987)
With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Lark
When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past -- and when you're seventy, nearly all of you.
JEAN ANOUILH
Time Remembered
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. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Collected Plays
Nothing is irreparable in politics.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Lark
Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy--common clay, if you like--eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people like you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others--the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.
JEAN ANOUILH
Point of Departure
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It's easy to say no, even if it means dying.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
They're crooked as corkscrews, the lot of them!
JEAN ANOUILH
Thieves' Carnival
There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.
JEAN ANOUILH
Ardele
Life consists of nothing more than the happiness we can get out of it.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt in God.
JEAN ANOUILH
Becket
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Lark
Inspiration is a trick that poets have invented to give themselves importance.
JEAN ANOUILH
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
My wife was an opera singer, you know. She bellowed her way through Wagner as a Valkyrie. I married her and made her give up the theatre, to my eternal cost. She was to go on acting for myself alone. A performance at his own expense, lasting for more than twenty years, tends to wear out your spectator.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Waltz of the Toreadors
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--not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
Madame Alexandra, if you don't open the door, I'll smash all your imitation china, I'll rip up your fake Persian rugs. Let me in, or it'll cost you a damn sight more than anything I want from you.
JEAN ANOUILH
Mademoiselle Colombe
If you think I'm dressing up as your ecclesiastical secretary like the last time, it's a no go. I'm not wearing a cassock in this heat.
JEAN ANOUILH
Thieves' Carnival
Saintliness is also a temptation.
JEAN ANOUILH
Becket
Believe me, all evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
JEAN ANOUILH
Plays
An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone