Samuel Beckett Quotes

Personally of course I regret everything.Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need,not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy,not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust,not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear,not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly.An ordure, from beginning to end.
Samuel Beckett
Cascando"why not merely the despaired ofoccasion ofwordshedis it not better abort than be barrenthe hours after you are gone are so leadenthey will always start dragging too soonthe grapples clawing blindly the bed of wantbringing up the bones the old lovessockets filled once with eyes like yoursall always is it better too soon than neverthe black want splashing their facessaying again nine days never floated the lovednor nine monthsnor nine livessaying againif you do not teach me I shall not learnsaying again there is a lasteven of last timeslast times of begginglast times of lovingof knowing not knowing pretendinga last even of last times of sayingif you do not love me I shall not be lovedif I do not love you I shall not lovethe churn of stale words in the heart againlove love love thud of the old plungerpestling the unalterablewhey of wordsterrified againof not lovingof loving and not youof being loved and not by youof knowing not knowing pretendingpretendingI and all the others that will love youif they love youunless they love you
Samuel Beckett
There's never an end for the sea.
Samuel Beckett
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
Samuel Beckett
Habit is a great deadener.
Samuel Beckett
For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of a man, even our anthropologists have realised that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.
Samuel Beckett
...then much, then little, then nothing.
Samuel Beckett
Name, no, nothing is namable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun.
Samuel Beckett
...nothing ever as much as begun, nothing ever but nothing and never, nothing ever but lifeless words.
Samuel Beckett
But mostly not for nothing never quite for nothing even stillest night when air too still for even the lightest leaf to sound no not to sound to carry too still for even the lightest leaf to carry the brief way here and not die the sound not die on the brief way the wave not die away.
Samuel Beckett
In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point.
Samuel Beckett
Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.
Samuel Beckett
Lucky's monologue: "(...)the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts peniciline and succedanea in a word(...)
Samuel Beckett
Estragon: And if he doesn't come?Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We'll see when the time comes.
Samuel Beckett
E: Well, shall we go?V: Yes, let's go.(They do not move)
Samuel Beckett
Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.
Samuel Beckett
I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.
Samuel Beckett
Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.
Samuel Beckett
When we are reading, a voice comes to us as in the dark and whispers, "Imagine!" Samuel Beckettas told by Bill Moyer in the Foreword he wrote for, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson. Afterword by Ann Patchett
Samuel Beckett
When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.
Samuel Beckett
HAMM:Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?NAGG:I didn't know.HAMM:What? What didn't you know?NAGG:That it'd be you.(Pause.)
Samuel Beckett
CLOV:Do you believe in the life to come?HAMM:Mine was always that.
Samuel Beckett
There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.
Samuel Beckett
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.We have time to grow old.The air is full of our cries.But habit is a great deadener.At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing.Let him sleep on.
Samuel Beckett
Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.
Samuel Beckett
Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.
Samuel Beckett
...The less I think of it the more certain I am.
Samuel Beckett
VLADIMIR: Moron!ESTRAGON: Vermin!VLADIMIR: Abortion!ESTRAGON: Morpion!VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!ESTRAGON: Curate!VLADIMIR: C
Samuel Beckett
And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.
Samuel Beckett
And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be.
Samuel Beckett
She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt.
Samuel Beckett
But it is only since I have ceased to live that I think of these things and the other things. It is in the tranquillity of decomposition that I remember the long confused emotion which was my life, and that I judge it, as it is said that God will judge me, and with no less impertinence. To decompose is to live too, I know, I know, don't torment me, but one sometimes forgets.
Samuel Beckett
My mother. I don't think too harshly of her. I know she did all she could not to have me, except of course the one thing, and if she never succeeded in getting me unstuck, it was that fate had earmarked me for less compassionate sewers.
Samuel Beckett
I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.
Samuel Beckett
She was willing a little bit of sweated labour, incapable of betraying the slogan of her slavers, that since the customer or sucker was paying for his gutrot ten times what it cost to produce and five times what it cost to fling in his face, it was only reasonable to defer to his complaints up to but not exceeding fifty per cent of his exploitation.
Samuel Beckett
Estragon: They're too bigVladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day
Samuel Beckett
Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.
Samuel Beckett
In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.
Samuel Beckett
My master then, assuming he is solitary, in my image, wishes me well, poor devil, wishes my good, and if he does not seem to do very much in order not to be disappointed it is because there is not very much to be done or, better still, because there is nothing to be done, otherwise he would have done it, my great and good master, that must be it, long ago, poor devil. Another supposition, he has taken the necessary steps, his will is done as far as I am concerned (for he may have other protégés) and all is well with me without my knowing it. Cases one and two. I’ll consider the former first, if I can. Then I’ll admire the latter, if my eyes are still open.
Samuel Beckett
The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.
Samuel Beckett
Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all?
Samuel Beckett
When I penetrate into that house, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive, like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning furniture, in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once, until by virtue of a supreme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards, without having said good evening.
Samuel Beckett
Bloom of adulthood. Try a whiff of that. On your back in the dark you remember. Ah you remember. Cloudless May day. She joins you in the little summerhouse. Entirely of logs. Both larch and fir. Six feet across. Eight from floor to vertex. Area twenty-four square feet to the furthest decimal. Two small multicoloured lights vis-a-vis. Small stained diamond panes. Under each a ledge. There on summer Sundays after his midday meal your father loved to retreat with Punch and a cushion. The waist of his trousers unbuttoned he sat on the one ledge and turned the pages. You on the other your feet dangling. When he chuckled you tried to chuckle too. When his chuckle died yours too. That you should try to imitate his chuckle pleased and amused him greatly and sometimes he would chuckle for no other reason than to hear you try to chuckle too. Sometimes you turn your head and look out through a rose-red pane. You press your little nose against the pane and all without is rosy. The years have flown and there at the same place as then you sit in the bloom of adulthood bathed in rainbow light gazing before you. She is late.
Samuel Beckett
Boys my age with whom, in spite of everything, I was obliged to mix occasionally, mocked me.
Samuel Beckett
The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.
Samuel Beckett
There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.
Samuel Beckett
In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead.
Samuel Beckett
He sometimes halted without saying anything. Either he had finally nothing to say or while having something to say he finally decided not to say it.
Samuel Beckett
I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.(Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.)Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.
Samuel Beckett
Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.
Samuel Beckett
Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.
Samuel Beckett
Have you shat, my child, I said gently.
Samuel Beckett
There he is then, the unfortunate brute, quite miserable because of me, for whom there is nothing to be done, and he so anxious to help, so used to giving orders and to being obeyed. There he is, ever since I came into the world, possibly at his instigation, I wouldn't put it past him, commanding me to be well, you know, in every way, no complaints at all, with as much success as if he were shouting at a lump of inanimate matter.
Samuel Beckett
We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?
Samuel Beckett
But we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep on adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or egg collection
Samuel Beckett
And perhaps there is none, no morrow anymore, for one who has waited so long for it in vain. And perhaps he has come to that stage of his instant when to live is to wander the last of the living in the depths of an instant without bounds, where the light never changes and the wrecks all look alike. Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fullness of the great deep and unchanging calm. But at long intervals they close, with the gentle suddenness of flesh that tightens, often without anger, and closes on itself.
Samuel Beckett
They love each other, marry (in order to love each other better, more conveniently). He goes to the wars, he dies at the wars. She weeps (with emotion) at having loved him, at having lost him. (Yep!) Marries again (in order to love again, more conveniently again). They love each other. (You love as many timesas necessary - as necessary in order to be happy.) He come back (the other comes back) from the wars: he didn't die at the wars after all. She goes tothe station, to meet him. He dies in the train (of emotion) at the thought of seeing her again, having her again. She weeps (weeps again, with emotionagain) at having lost him again. (Yep!) Goes back to the house. He's dead - the other is dead. The mother-in-law takes him down: he hanged himself (with emotion) at the thought of losing her. She weeps (weeps louder) at having loved him, at having lost him.
Samuel Beckett
they comedifferent and the samewith each it is different and the samewith each the absence of love is differentwith each the absence of love is the same
Samuel Beckett
Dying for dark - the darker the worse. Strange.
Samuel Beckett
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.—Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)
Samuel Beckett