In my Web Gallery I had quoted a paragraph from G. Green's The quite American and then found a very similar paragraph by Eugene Ionesco which is lovely!

"To be free, to be outside of History, not to be part of the order of the
world, not to be an instrument in the orchestra or a note in the symph-
ony. Not to be onstage. To see and hear everything from the audiences
if one were outside the universe. If we are onestage, if we are part of the
orchestra, we hear only the tumult, we are aware only of the dissonances."

--Eugene Ionesco, Present Past, Past Present, p.51