| Author Quoted | Eugène Ionesco |
| Title Quoted | Notes et contre-notes |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1964/12/06 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1962 |
| Quotation | Thank God I have been purged of Sartre by Ionesco. I don't think Ionesco is a great artist but he is healthy and alive and free. Sartre is not free, for all his academic mumblings about freedom and "engagement." Nor is his refusal of the Nobel Prize to me a convincing proof of anything except perhaps that he is clever enough to know how much he needs to fight his own bad faith. And so now, sure enough, he is in Life with a sly little smile-and essentially he is a clever, mild little bourgeois. An honest modest man. But he has to be a dragon and that is his trouble. Hence-"misguided direction," arrogance, pontifical ceremonies, declarations, etc. But who is without guilt? Ionesco carries it off better than Sartre. He is more truly a child, and independent. |
| Quotation Source | Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 176 |
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