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Samuel Beckett Quotes
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Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, he wrote in both French and English.

Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragi-comic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd".Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. Wikipedia  

✵ 13. April 1906 – 22. December 1989
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Samuel Beckett: 122   quotes 67   likes

Samuel Beckett Quotes

“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)

Law , Business , Water

“It means what it says.”

Samuel Beckett

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)

Sport , God , Water

“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.”

Samuel Beckett

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.

Chance

“Birth was the death of him.”

Samuel Beckett A Piece of Monologue

A Piece of Monologue (1979)

Birth , Death

“Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

Question

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

Samuel Beckett

"Samuel Beckett Talks About Beckett" https://archive.vogue.com/article/1969/12/nobel-prize-winner-1969-samuel-beckett-talks-about-beckett, Vogue Magazine, 1969

Silence