Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 11

Quotes about:

• Enough to know no knowing.

  Samuel Beckett

  Knowledge, Knowing, Pessimism

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still”, p.63, Faber & Faber

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• Where you have nothing, there you should want nothing.

  Samuel Beckett

  Want, Should

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• 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

  Reality, Together, Flesh

  Samuel Beckett (1964). “How it is”, p.140, Grove Press

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• My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.

  Samuel Beckett

  Responsibility, People, Criticism

  Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider, Maurice Harmon (1998). “No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider”, p.24, Harvard University Press

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• POZZO: I am blind. (Silence.) ESTRAGON: Perhaps he can see into the future.

  Samuel Beckett

  Silence, Blind

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.76, Faber & Faber

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• You would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.

  Samuel Beckett

  Looks, Misery, Speechless

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.9, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.

  Samuel Beckett

  Our Generation, Somewhere Else, Laughing

  Samuel Beckett (1970). “The collected works of Samuel Beckett”

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• 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

  Saving Up, Age, Said

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There is this to be said for Dachsunds of such length and lowness as Nelly, that it makes very little difference to their appearance whether they stand, sit or lie.

  Samuel Beckett

  Lying, Differences, Littles

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• Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Philosophy, Reality

  First Love (1973) p. 8

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• Estragon: Suppose we repented. Vladimir: Repented what? Estragon: Oh...(He reflects.) We wouldn’t have to go into the details. Vladimir: Our being born?

  Samuel Beckett

  Details, Born

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• 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

  Sadness, Eye, Brain

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.7, Faber & Faber

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• All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.

  Samuel Beckett

  Might, Enthusiasm, Reason

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “Molloy”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, World, Crafts

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Calder Publications Limited

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• Estragon: I can't go on like this.
  Vladimir: That's what you think.

  Samuel Beckett

  Moving On, Encouraging, Thinking

  "Waiting for Godot". Play by Samuel Beckett, 1952.

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• Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

  Samuel Beckett

  Writing, Silence, Matter

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• 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.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Stars, Moon

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• An imaginative adventure does not enjoy the same corsets as reportage.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Adventure, Imagination

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Calder Publications Limited

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• I have nothing but wastes and wilds of self-translation before me for many miserable months to come.

  Samuel Beckett

  Self, Literature, Waste

  Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider, Maurice Harmon (1998). “No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider”, p.14, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Somewhere Else, Laughing, Tears

  "Waiting for Godot". Play by Samuel Beckett, 1952.

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• We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness!

  Samuel Beckett

  Hands, Bored, Waiting

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.72, Faber & Faber

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Time, Night, Light

  Waiting for Godot act 2 (1952)

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• 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

  Moving, Light, Darkness

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Krapp's Last Tape and Other Shorter Plays”, p.24, Faber & Faber

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• Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.

  Samuel Beckett

  Moving, Three, Void

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still”, p.68, Faber & Faber

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• I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.

  Samuel Beckett

  Animal, Men, Strange

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “Molloy”, p.110, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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