Quotes from book
Watt

Name: Watt
Author: Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English. It was largely written on the run in the South of France during the Second World War and was first published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953 . A French translation followed in 1968.

“God is a witness that cannot be sworn.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part I, p. 4
Watt (1943)

“The long blue days, for his head, for his side, and the little paths for his feet, and all the brightness to touch and gather. Through the grass the little mosspaths, bony with old roots, and the trees sticking up, and the flowers sticking up, and the fruit hanging down, and the white exhausted butterflies, and the birds never the same darting all day long into hiding. And all the sounds, meaning nothing. Then at night rest in the quiet house, there are no roads, no streets any more, you lie down by a window opening on refuge, the little sounds come that demand nothing, ordain nothing, explain nothing, propound nothing, and the short necessary night is soon ended, and the sky blue again all over the secret places where nobody ever comes, the secret places never the same, but always simple and indifferent, always mere places, sites of a stirring beyond coming and going, of a being so light and free that it is as the being of nothing.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part I, p. 39
Watt (1943)

“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).”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part II, p. 133
Watt (1943)

“We are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part I, p. 50
Watt (1943)

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

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part II, p. 117
Watt (1943)

“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 man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part II, p. 77
Watt (1943)

“Bid us sigh on from day to day,
And wish and wish the soul away,
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the life of life is gone.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Addenda, p. 248
Watt (1943)

“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)

“Personally of course I regret everything.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part I, p. 37
Watt (1943)
Context: Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place, that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end.