SAMUEL BECKETT QUOTES II
Irish novelist & playwright (1906-1989)
I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The End
Nothing is more real than nothing.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Malone Dies
All I say cancels out, I'll have said nothing.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The Calmative
those words of old in their place of old end of part three and last present formulation at the end before the silence the panting without pause the animal in want of air the mouth murmuring them in the mud and the continuation of old when the panting stops ten words fifteen words a murmur to the mud
SAMUEL BECKETT
How It Is
The only sin is the sin of being born.
SAMUEL BECKETT
"Samuel Beckett Talks About Beckett", Vogue, Dec. 1969
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The Unnamable
Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The Unnamable
I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The Letters of Samuel Becket 1929-1940
To contrive a little kingdom, in the midst of the universal muck, then shit on it, ah that was me all over.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The End
in reality we are one and all from the unthinkable first to the no less unthinkable last glued together in a vast imbrication of flesh without breach or fissure
SAMUEL BECKETT
How It Is
I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Endgame
another story leave it dark no the same story not two stories leave it dark all the same like the rest a little darker a few words all the same a few old words like for the rest stop panting let it stop
SAMUEL BECKETT
How It Is
they are not memories no he has no memories no nothing to prove he was ever above no in the places he sees no but he may have been yes skulking somewhere yes hugging the walls yes by night yes he can't affirm anything no deny anything no so one can't speak of memories no but at the same time one can speak of them yes
SAMUEL BECKETT
How It Is
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Murphy
Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!
SAMUEL BECKETT
Endgame
Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?
SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot
He dared to grow wild with his shadowy love and he daily watered by daily littles the ground under his face and beerbibbing did not lay siege to his spirit and he was continent and he was not sustenant and many of his months have since run out with him the pestilent person to take him from behind his crooked back and set him before his ulcerous gob in the boiling over of his fornications and in chambering and wantonness and in deafness and death and bitter and blind bawling against the honey what honey bloody well you know the honey and in canvassing and getting and weltering in filth and scratching off the scabies of lust.
SAMUEL BECKETT
"Sedendo et Quiescendo", Samuel Beckett: Poems
My mistakes are my life.
SAMUEL BECKETT
How It Is
It is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Watt
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot