Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh, 1910 – 1987
Born: 23 June 1910, C
Died: 3 October 1987, Lausanne, Switzerland
Anouilh was of Basque heritage, his father a tailor and his mother a violinist. He maintained that he learned pride in craftsmanship from his father and creativity from his mother. After attending local shools, he entered the University of Paris to study law but left after less than two years when he got a job in advertising. He later credited the discipline of copy writing for developing the brevity and precision of his work which included thirty plays. His work often showed the conflict between idealism and realism, definitely a factor in Becket, which I’ve seen and enjoyed in the film version (1964, with Peter O’Toole as King Henry and Richard Burton as Becket).
Jean Anouilh quotes:
A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.
Jean Anouilh
A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.
Jean Anouilh
A happy love is full of quarrels, you know.
Jean Anouilh – Antigone (1942)
All evil comes from the old.They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
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.
Jean Anouilh
Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.
Jean Anouilh
Each of us has a day when he has to accept, finally, the fact that he is a man.
Jean Anouilh
Every man thinks god is on his side.
Jean Anouilh
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
Jean Anouilh
Everything ends this way in France. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, affairs of state — everything is a pretext for a good dinner.
Jean Anouilh – Cécile (1954)
God is on everyone’s side…. In the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.
Jean Anouilh
Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?
Jean Anouilh
I like reality. It tastes like bread.
Jean Anouilh
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
It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness even to be truly base.
Jean Anouilh
