Stories and Texts for Nothing Quotes

“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, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“There’s my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don’t say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that’s the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“I weep without interruption. It's an unbroken flow of words and tears. With no pause for reflection. But I speak softer, every year a little softer. Perhaps. Slower too, every year a little slower. Perhaps. it is hard for me to judge. If so the pauses would be longer, between the words, the sentences, the syllables, the tears, I confuse them, the words and tears, my words are my tears, my eyes my mouth.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“How long have I been here, what a question, I've often wondered. And often I could answer, An hour, a month, a year, a century, depending on what I meant by here, and me, and being, and there I never went looking for extravagant meanings, there I never much varied, only the here would sometimes seem to vary. ”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“Yes, I was my father and I was my son, I asked myself questions and answered as best I could, I had it told to me evening after evening, the same old story I knew by heart and couldn't believe, or we walked together, hand in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds, each in his worlds, the hands forgotten in each other. That's how I've held out till now. And this evening again it seems to be working, I'm in my arms, I'm holding myself in my arms, without much tenderness, but faithfully, faithfully. Sleep now, as under that ancient lamp, all twined together, tired out with so much talking, so much listening, so much toil and play.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself whereas life alone is enough.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“Name, no, nothing is nameable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“I don't know when I died. It always seemed to me I died old, about ninety years old, and what years, and that my body bore it out, from head to foot. But this evening, alone in my icy bed, I have the feeling I'll be older than the day, the night, when the sky with all its lights fell upon me, the same I had so often gazed on since my first stumblings on the distant earth. For I'm too frightened this evening to listen to myself rot, waiting for the great red lapses of the heart, the tear sings at the caecal walls, and for the slow killings to finish in my skull, the assaults on unshakable pillars, the fornications with corpses. So I'll tell myself a story, I'll try and tell myself another story, to try and calm myself, and it's there I feel I'll be old, old, even older than the day I fell, calling for help, and it came. Or is it possible that in this story I have come back to life, after my death? No, it's not like me to come back to life, after my death.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“It's not me, it's not true, it's not me, I'm far.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“I'm no longer with these assassins, in this bed of terror, but in my distant refuge, my hands twined together, my head bowed, weak, breathless, calm, free, and older than I'll ever have been, if my calculations are correct. I'll tell my story in the past none the less, as though it were a myth, or an old fable, for this evening I need another age in which I became what I was.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“What am I doing now, I’m trying to see where I am, so as to be able to go elsewhere, should occasion arise, or else simply to say, You have merely to wait till they come and fetch you, that’s my impression at times.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“...and I'll be able to go on, no, I'll be able to stop, or start, another guzzle of lies but piping hot, it will last my time, it will be my time and place, my voice and silence, a voice of silence, the voice of my silence. It's with such prospects they exhort you to have patience, whereas you are patient, and calm, somehow somewhere calm, what calm here, ah that's an idea, say how calm it is here, and how fine I feel, and how silent I am, I'll start right away, I'll say what calm and silence, which nothing has ever broken, nothing will ever break, which saying I don't break, or saying I'll be saying, yes, I'll say all that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow evening, some other evening, not this evening, this evening it's too late, too late to gets things right, I'll go to sleep, so that I may say, hear myself say, a little later, I've slept, he's slept, but he won't have slept, or else he's sleeping now, he'll have done nothing, nothing but go on, doing what, doing what he does, that is to say, I don't know, giving up, that's it, I'll have gone on giving up, having had nothing, not being there.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“So 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. But it was nothing, mere speechlessness due to long silence, as in the wood that darkens the mouth of hell, do you remember, I only just.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“It’s to me this evening something has to happen, to my body as in myth and metamorphosis, this old body to which nothing ever happened, or so little, which never met with anything, wished for anything, in its tarnished universe, except for the mirrors to shatter, the plane, the curved, the magnifying, the minifying, and to vanish in the havoc of its images.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“To change, to see, no, there's no more to see, I've seen it all, till my eyes are blear, nor to get away from harm, the harm is done.”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing

“حاشا نمی کنم،حاشا تا کی،خواهم گفت من تنم،تنی که می جنبد ،به پیش ،به پس،بالا و پایین،بر حسب ضرورت ،با یک مشت اندام و اعضا،تمام آنچه لازم است برای زندگی دوباره،چندصباحی بیشتر دوام آوردن،اسمش را زندگی خواهم گذاشت و خواهم گفت این منم،خواهم ایستاد ،دیگر نخواهم اندیشید،سرم بسیار شلوغ خواهد بود ،به ایستادن،ایستاده ماندن،این سو و آن سو رفتن ،دوام آوردن،رسیدن به فردا،به هفته ی بعد از فردا،کافی خواهد بود”
― Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing