Samuel Beckett Quotes

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

Press and gloom make recognition difficult. Man and wife are strangers two paces apart to mention only this most intimate of all bonds. Let them move on till they are close enough to touch and then without pausing on their way exchange a look. If they recognize each other it does not appear. Whatever it is they are searching for it is not that.

I find me, leave me, go towards me, come from me, nothing ever but me, a particle of me, retrieved, lost, gone astray, 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...

Wherever nauseated time has dropped a nice fat turd you will find our patriots, sniffing it up on all fours, their faces on fire.

Deplorable mania, when something happens, to inquire what.

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.

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.

I am interested in the shape of ideas, even if I do not believe in them

She had at least the anagram of a good face

Have you shat, my child, I said gently.

None looks within himself where none can be.

The more people I meet the happier I become.

My way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end

The scream of No's knife in Yes's wound.

And is it not strange most strange that one says of a thing that it is full, when it is not full at all, but not of a thing that is empty, if it is not empty? And perhaps the reason for that is this, that when one fills, one seldom fills quite full, for that would not be convenient, whereas when one empties one empties completely, holding the vessel upside down, and rinsing it out with boiling water if necessary, with a kind of fury.

you don't feel a mouth on you, you don't feel your mouth any more, no need of a mouth, the words are everywhere, inside me, outside me...

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

Let us say before i go any further, that i forgive nobody. i wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.

But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.

The sky sinks in the morning, this fact has been insufficiently observed.

I gave up before birth.

Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.

HAMM:
Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday!
CLOV (violently):
That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody awful day. I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.
(Pause.)

CLOV:
Do you believe in the life to come?
HAMM:
Mine was always that.

From things about to disappear I turn away in time. To watch them out of sight, no, I can't do it.

The little cloud drifting before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.

The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint.

The time is perhaps not altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear, and more than the light of day (or night) makes the subsolar, -lunar, and -stellar excrement. Art is the sun, moon, and stars of the mind, the whole mind.

Nothing is more real than nothing.

This should all be rewritten in the pluperfect.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Don't wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.

That passed the time. It would have passed in any case. Yes, but not so rapidly.

Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic.

And if I have always behaved like a pig, the fault lies not with me but with my superiors, who corrected me only on points of detail instead of showing me the essence of the system ...

And I am perhaps confusing several different occasions, and different times, deep down, and deep down is my dwelling, oh not deepest down, somewhere between the mud and the scum.

Sloth is all passions the most powerful.

Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it the time needed for it to love you and you it, then throw it away.

My dear Tom,
Delighted to get your letter. Do write again. This life is terrible and I don't understand how it can be endured.

Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.

A instant of fraternity. But outside their explosions of violence this sentiment is as foreign to them as butterflies. And this owing not so much to want of heart or intelligence as to the ideal preying on one and all. So much for the inviolable zenith where for amateurs of myth lies hidden a way out to earth and sky.

But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

Story ... if you could finish it ... you could rest ... you could sleep ... not before ... oh I know ... the ones I've finished ... thousands and one ... all I ever did ... in my life ... with my life ... saying to myself ... finish this one ... it's the right one ... then rest ...

Art has always been this
pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric
whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

I cannot explain my plays. Each must find out for himself what is meant

And at the thought of the punishments Youdi might inflict upon me I was seized by such a mighty fit of laughter that I shook, with mightly silent laughter and my features composed in their wonted sadness and calm. But my whole body shook, and even my legs, so that I had to lean against a tree, or against a bush, when the fit came on me standing, my umbrella being no longer sufficient to keep me from falling. Strange laughter truly, and no doubt misnamed.

Here he stood. Here he sat. Here he knelt. Here he lay. Here he moved, to and fro, from the door to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the bed.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

Oh it is not without scathe that one is gentle, courteous, reasonable, patient, day after day, year after year.

ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That's what you think.

Live and invent. I have tried. I must have tried. Invent. It is not the word. Neither is to live. No matter. I have tried. [ ... ] I say living without knowing what it is. I tried to live without knowing what I was trying. Perhaps I have lived afterall, without knowing.

All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway.

What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all
eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.

Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it.

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

In the end he said, I am Mercier, alone, ill, in the cold, the wet, old, half mad, no way on, no way back. He eyed briefly, with nostalgia, the ghastly sky, the hideous earth. At your age, he said. Another act. Immaterial

You think you are simply resting, the better to act when the time comes, or for no reason, and you soon find yourself powerless ever to do anything again.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

On. Stare on. Say on. Be on. Somehow on. Anyhow on. Till dim gone. At long last gone. All at long last gone.

You may say it is all in my head, and indeed sometimes it seems to me I am in a head and that these eight, no, six, these six planes that enclose me are of solid bone. But thence to conclude the head is mine, no, never.

Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!

With his two hands he props up his jaw. He passes without a word. Perhaps he does not see me. One of these days I'll challenge him. I'll say, I don't know, I'll say something, I'll think of something when the time comes.

All roads were right for me, a wrong road was an event, for me.

The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere. The essential is to go on squirming forever at the edge of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting God to plague his creature, per pro his chosen shits. I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but strech out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for eternity.

For what is this shadow of the going in which we come, this shadow of the coming in which we go, this shadow of the coming and the going in which we wait, if not the shadow of purpose, of the purpose that budding withers, that withering buds, whose blooming is a budding withering.

I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. 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. *1937

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.

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (pause) 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. (Pause.) I can't go on! (Pause.) What have I said?

He who has waited long enough, will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.

I don't think I recognize you, sir, said Camier.
I am Watt, said Watt. As you say, I'm unrecognizable.
Watt? said Camier. The name means nothing to me.
I am not widely know, said Watt, true, but I shall be, one day. Not universally, perhaps, my notoriety is not likely ever to penetrate to the denizens of Dublin's fair city, or of Cuq-Toulza.

Delicious instants, before one's eyes get used to the dark.

Try again. Fail again. Try better.

I must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.

...saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
...
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you

Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don't understand, it dies, or it's me, I don't understand that either. I ask the words that remain- sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say.

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone. There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got there thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages,so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work any more. That doesn't matter apparently. What I'd like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my good-byes, finish dying. They don't want that. Yes, there is more than one, apparently. But it's always the same one that comes. You'll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is I haven't much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week's. They are marked with signs I don't understand ... Here's my beginning. It must mean something, or they wouldn't keep it. Here it is.

Dance first, think later.

I was sorry he had not a cat, or a young dog, or better still, an old dog. But all he had to offer in the way of dumb companions was a pink and grey parrot. He used to try and teach it to say, Nihil in intellectu, etc. These first three words the bird managed well enough, but the celebrated restriction was too much for it, all you heard was a series of squawks.

But he had hardly felt the absurdity of those things, on the one hand, and the necessity of those others, on the other, (for it is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity), when he felt the absurdity of those things of which he had just felt the necessity (for it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity.)

ESTRAGON: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.
VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.
VLADIMIR: We have that excuse.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear.
VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.

We should have thought of it when the world was young, in the nineties.

VLADIMIR: Dance, hog!

But it seems impossible to speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you always overlook something.

The blue face! The obscene protrusion of the tongue! The tumefaction of the penis! The penis, well now, that's a surprise, I'd forgotten I had one. What a pity I have no arms, there might still be something to be wrung from it. No, 'tis better thus. At my age, to start manstuprating again, it would be indecent. And fruitless. And yet one can never tell. With a yo heave yo, concentrating with all my might on a horse's rump, at the moment when the tail raises, who knows, I might not go altogether empty-handed away. Heaven, I almost felt it flutter!

The sweet creature! She would look it up in her big Dante when she got home. What a woman!

Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all that is over, no, for the being over, words have been my only loves, not many.

My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.

All hangs together, I am in chains.

But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.

Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity.

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.

Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing.

The sound I liked best had nothing noble about it. It was the barking of the dogs, at night, in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them. it came down to me where I lay, in the house in the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary. The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and jaws and foam...

But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.

Our vulgar perception is not concerned with other than vulgar phenomena.

My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance ... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art.

Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.

Yes, I know they are words, there was a time I didn't, as I still don't know if they are mine.

The end of a life is always vivifying.