Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 2

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
(Looking at the tree) Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.
Samuel Beckett
And if ever I'm reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell, it's in that old mess I'll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast.
Samuel Beckett
[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral.
Samuel Beckett
Henry: I usen't to need anyone, just to myself, stories, there was a great one about an old fellow called Bolton, I never finished it, I never finished any of them, I never finished anything, everything always went on for ever. (Pause.)
Samuel Beckett
The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to... (hesitates) ...me. (Pause.)
Samuel Beckett
Estragon: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.
Samuel Beckett
Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.
Samuel Beckett
But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. He was eloquent. I pointed out that I was not sad. That was a mistake. Your papers, he said, I knew it a moment later. Not at all, I said, not at all. Your papers! he cried. Ah my papers.
Samuel Beckett
The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.
Samuel Beckett
I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments.
Samuel Beckett
I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.
Samuel Beckett
How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.
Samuel Beckett
I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life.
Samuel Beckett
There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.
Samuel Beckett
But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.
Samuel Beckett
I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.
Samuel Beckett
I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)It will be I? It will be the silence, 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
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett
Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone, too.Vladmir: Then why do you always come crawling back?Estragon: I don't know.
Samuel Beckett
Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen.
Samuel Beckett
With a cluther of limbs and organs, all that is needed to live again, to hold out a little time, I'll call that living, I'll say it's me, I'll get standing, I'll stop thinking, I'll be too busy, getting standing, staying standing, stirring about, holding out, getting to tomorrow, tomorrow week, that will be ample, a week will be ample, a week in spring, that puts the jizz in you.
Samuel Beckett
A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so.
Samuel Beckett
Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.
Samuel Beckett
Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound.
Samuel Beckett
But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.
Samuel Beckett
You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the fringe of her long black hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are hidden from view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade.
Samuel Beckett
Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?Henry: Not a living soul.Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted.
Samuel Beckett
For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on. So that I was never disappointed, so to speak, whatever I did, in this domain. And these inseparable fools I indulged turn about, that they might understand their foolishness.
Samuel Beckett
To be always what I am - and so changed from what I was.
Samuel Beckett
To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.
Samuel Beckett
What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.
Samuel Beckett
Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.
Samuel Beckett
As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.
Samuel Beckett
ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go.
Samuel Beckett
Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.
Samuel Beckett
To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.
Samuel Beckett
The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness.
Samuel Beckett
POZZO:I am blind.(Silence.)ESTRAGON:Perhaps he can see into the future.
Samuel Beckett
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
Samuel Beckett
POZZO:I am blind.(Silence.)ESTRAGON:Perhaps he can see into the future.
Samuel Beckett
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
Samuel Beckett
It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.
Samuel Beckett
You can't have everything, I've often noticed it.
Samuel Beckett
Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
Spend the years of learning squanderingCourage for the years of wanderingThrough a world politely turningFrom the loutishness of learning.
Samuel Beckett
[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so.
Samuel Beckett
drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.
Samuel Beckett
And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant.
Samuel Beckett
One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second.
Samuel Beckett
I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.
Samuel Beckett
Ah earth you old extinguisher.
Samuel Beckett
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
Samuel Beckett
The only sin is the sin of being born
Samuel Beckett
Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything.
Samuel Beckett
If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.
Samuel Beckett
I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought.
Samuel Beckett
The more people I meet the happier I become.
Samuel Beckett
It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.
Samuel Beckett
In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?
Samuel Beckett