Samuel Beckett Quotes

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

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

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

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.

~ 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

In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.

~ 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

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

I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

~ 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

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

She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt.

~ 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

VLADIMIR: Moron!ESTRAGON: Vermin!VLADIMIR: Abortion!ESTRAGON: Morpion!VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!ESTRAGON: Curate!VLADIMIR: C

~ Samuel Beckett

...The less I think of it the more certain I am.

~ 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

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

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

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

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

~ 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

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

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

Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.

~ 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

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

~ 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

Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.

~ 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

...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

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

Habit is a great deadener.

~ Samuel Beckett

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

~ Samuel Beckett

Cascandowhy 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