No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
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.
It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, … what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.
In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?
I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought.
If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.
Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything.
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.
One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second.
drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.
[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so.
Spend the years of learning squanderingCourage for the years of wanderingThrough a world politely turningFrom the loutishness of learning.
Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.
POZZO:I am blind.(Silence.)ESTRAGON:Perhaps he can see into the future.
The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness.
To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.
Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.
ESTRAGON: Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go.
As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.
Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.
To have been always what I am – and so changed from what I was.
To be always what I am – and so changed from what I was.
Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound.
A mug’s game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so.
Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen.
Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I’m with you. I feel better alone, too.Vladmir: Then why do you always come crawling back?Estragon: I don’t know.
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.
But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.
There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.
I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life.
How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I’d been saving up for her all my life.
I asked her to look at me and after a few moments – (pause) – after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.
I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog’s moments.
The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.
Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.
The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to… (hesitates) …me. (Pause.)
Henry: I usen’t to need anyone, just to myself, stories, there was a great one about an old fellow called Bolton, I never finished it, I never finished any of them, I never finished anything, everything always went on for ever. (Pause.)
And if ever I’m reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell, it’s in that old mess I’ll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast.
(Looking at the tree) Pity we haven’t got a bit of rope.
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.—Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)
they comedifferent and the samewith each it is different and the samewith each the absence of love is differentwith each the absence of love is the same
We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?
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.
Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.
He sometimes halted without saying anything. Either he had finally nothing to say or while having something to say he finally decided not to say it.
In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead.
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.
Boys my age with whom, in spite of everything, I was obliged to mix occasionally, mocked me.
Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn’t tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That’s what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all?
The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.
In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.
Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.
Estragon: They’re too bigVladimir: Perhaps you’ll have socks some day
I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.
My mother. I don’t think too harshly of her. I know she did all she could not to have me, except of course the one thing, and if she never succeeded in getting me unstuck, it was that fate had earmarked me for less compassionate sewers.
She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt.
And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.
VLADIMIR: Moron!ESTRAGON: Vermin!VLADIMIR: Abortion!ESTRAGON: Morpion!VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!ESTRAGON: Curate!VLADIMIR: C
Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.
Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.
There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.
CLOV:Do you believe in the life to come?HAMM:Mine was always that.
HAMM:Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?NAGG:I didn’t know.HAMM:What? What didn’t you know?NAGG:That it’d be you.(Pause.)
When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.
When we are reading, a voice comes to us as in the dark and whispers, “Imagine!” Samuel Beckettas told by Bill Moyer in the Foreword he wrote for, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson. Afterword by Ann Patchett
Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.
Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.
Estragon: And if he doesn’t come?Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We’ll see when the time comes.
E: Well, shall we go?V: Yes, let’s go.(They do not move)
Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn’t enough for you.
Name, no, nothing is namable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don’t know, I shouldn’t have begun.
…nothing ever as much as begun, nothing ever but nothing and never, nothing ever but lifeless words.
If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love.
Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.