Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

by Samuel Beckett

Of the same species as Pozzo! Made in God’s image!

[Tenderly.] I’ll carry you. [Pause.] If necessary.

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

POZZO: I don’t seem to be able … [Long hesitation] … to depart. ESTRAGON: Such is life.

ESTRAGON: You see, you feel worse when I’m with you. I feel better alone, too. VLADIMIR: [Vexed.] Then why do you always come crawling back?

ESTRAGON: It’d be better if we parted. VLADIMIR: You always say that, and you always come crawling back. ESTRAGON: The best thing would be to kill me, like the other.

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

Do you think God sees me?

Memoria praeteritorum bonorum – that must be unpleasant.

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

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?

At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. [Pause.] I can’t go on! [Pause.] What have I said?

He’d punish us. [Silence. He looks at the tree.] Everything’s dead but the tree.