Samuel Beckett > Quotes

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
― Samuel Beckett

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”
― Samuel Beckett

“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, Waiting for Godot

“Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I can't go on, I'll go on.”
― Samuel Beckett, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader

“My mistakes are my life.”
― Samuel Beckett

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

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

“Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!”
― Samuel Beckett

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”
― Samuel Beckett, Murphy

“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.”
― Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape & Embers

“The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Je suis comme ça. Ou j'oublie tout de suite ou je n'oublie jamais."

Samuel BECKETT, En attendant Godot

I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget. ”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.”
― Samuel Beckett

“The only sin is the sin of being born”
― Samuel Beckett

“Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Normally I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Words are all we have.”
― Samuel Beckett

“No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Don't wait to be hunted to hide.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Estragon: People are bloody ignorant apes.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“Vladimir: There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Vladimir: Did I ever leave you?
Estragon: You let me go.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“I must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.”
― Samuel Beckett

“there is [...]
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love”
― Samuel Beckett, Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces

“Estragon: Nothing to be done.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

“If you don't know where you are currently standing, your dead”
― Samuel Beckett, Happy Days

“ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That's what you think.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Habit is a great deadener.”
― Samuel Beckett

“You cried for night - it falls. Now cry in darkness.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Pozzo: Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. ”
― Samuel Beckett

“We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench”
― Samuel Beckett

“All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I've got my faults, but changing my tune isn't one of them.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Nothing is more real than nothing.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear”
― Samuel Beckett

“The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday
howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns,
the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the
welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“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