Samuel Beckett quotes - page 7

I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them. (Samuel Beckett)
Some of this rubbish has come in handy on occasions, I don't deny it, on occasions which would never have arisen if they had left me in peace. I use it still, to scratch my arse with. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Strictly speaking I wasn't there. Strictly speaking I believe I've never been anywhere. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Personally of course I regret everything. View quote
Samuel Beckett
I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line. View quote
Samuel Beckett
By nature I mean here, like the naïvest realist, a composite of perceiver and perceived, not a datum, an experience. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Let me cry out then, it's said to be good for you. Yes let me cry out, this time, then another time perhaps, then perhaps a last time. View quote
Samuel Beckett
What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. View quote
Samuel Beckett
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. (Samuel Beckett)
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. View quote
Samuel Beckett
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. View quote
Samuel Beckett
And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. View quote
Samuel Beckett
My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms. View quote
Samuel Beckett
All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into. View quote
Samuel Beckett
What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Words are the clothes thoughts wear. View quote
Samuel Beckett
The day you die is just like any other, only shorter. View quote
Samuel Beckett
I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe in them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine ... 'Do not despair one of the thieves was saved do not presume one of the thieves was damned.' That sentence had a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters. (Samuel Beckett)
But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better. View quote
Samuel Beckett
The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of. View quote
Samuel Beckett
Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful. View quote
Samuel Beckett