Samuel Beckett: Trending quotes

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Samuel Beckett: 244 quotes68 likes

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

"Gnome" in Dublin Magazine Vol. 9 (1934), p. 8

“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.”

Samuel Beckett book Malone Dies

Malone Dies (1951)

“There is something … more important in life than punctuality, and that is decorum.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“Consider: the darkening ease, the brightening trouble; the pleasure pleasure because it was, the pain pain because it shall be; the glad acts grown proud, the proud acts growing stubborn; the panting and trembling towards a being gone, a being to come; and the true true no longer, and the false true not yet. And to decide not to smile after all, sitting in the shade, hearing the cicadas, wishing it were night, wishing it were morning, saying, No, it is not the heart, no, it is not the liver, no, it is not the prostate, no, it is not the ovaries, no, it is muscular, it is nervous.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part III, p. 201
Watt (1943)

“To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.”

The Expelled (1946)

“Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little yellow flame feebly darting from side to side, panting, as if straining to tear itself from its wick, it should never have been lit, or it should never have been fed, or it should have been put out, put out, it should have been let go out.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

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

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

“The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“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.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

“I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended.”

The Calmative (1946)

“These things I say, and shall say, if I can, are no longer, or are not yet, or never were, or never will be, or if they were, if they are, if they will be, were not here, are not here, will not be here, but elsewhere.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

“Krapp: Ah finish your booze now and get to your bed. Go on with this drivel in the morning. Or leave it at that. (Pause.) Leave it at that.”

Samuel Beckett Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape (1958)

“I felt weak, perhaps I was.”

The End (1946)

“All I say cancels out, I’ll have said nothing.”

The Calmative (1946)

“And once again I am I will not say alone, no, that's not like me, but, how shall I say, I don't know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free, yes, I don't know what that means but it's the word I mean to use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that 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 is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“It means what it says.”

Said about Waiting for Godot, from Jonathan Croall, The Coming of Godot (2005) ISBN 1-840-02595-6, p. 91

“The essential is to go on squirming forever at the end of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting god to plague his creatures, per pro his chosen shits.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

“The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being acutely aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in.”

Tom F. Driver, "Beckett by the Madeleine" (1961), Columbia University Forum 4 (Summer 1961): 21-25; it later appeared in Stanley A. Clayes, ed., Drama and Discussion (1967), pp. 604-7, as quoted in "Rick On Theater" 25 January 2018 http://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2018/01/beckett-by-madeleine.html.

“Birth was the death of him.”

Samuel Beckett A Piece of Monologue

A Piece of Monologue (1979)