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Samuel Beckett Quotes
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And once again I am I will not say alone, no, that's not like me, but, how shall I say, I don't know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free, yes, I don't know what that means but it's the word I mean to use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine, if they want me to succeed I'll fail, and vise versa, so as not to be rid of my tormentors.
Samuel Beckett
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I didn't feel well, but they told me I was well enough. They didn't say in so many words that I was as well as I would ever be, but that was the implication.
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.
Samuel Beckett
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The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust
Samuel Beckett
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How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones?
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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All that is active, all that is enveloped in time and space, is endowed with what might be described as an abstract, ideal and absolute impermeability.
Samuel Beckett
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But it seems impossible to speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you always overlook something.
Samuel Beckett
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In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.
Samuel Beckett
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When the object is perceived as particular and unique and not merely the member of a family, when it appears independent of any general notion and detached from the sanity of a cause, isolated and inexplicable in the light of ignorance, then and only then may it be a source of enchantment.
Samuel Beckett
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Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality.
Samuel Beckett
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I want very much to be back in the caul, on my back in the dark forever.
Samuel Beckett
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Hardly had the glow been kindled by some good deed on your part or by some little triumph over your rivals or by a word of praisefrom your parents or mentors when it would begin to cool and fade leaving you in a very short time as chill and dim as before.
Samuel Beckett
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My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.
Samuel Beckett
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Let us do something, while we have the chance!... 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!
Samuel Beckett
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It is better to adopt the simplest explanation, even if it is not simple, even if it does not explain very much. A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns.
Samuel Beckett
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Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.
Samuel Beckett
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Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.
Samuel Beckett
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The pendulum oscillates between these two terms: Suffering-that opens a window on the real and is the main condition of the artistic experience, and Boredom... that must be considered as the most tolerable because the most durable of human evils.
Samuel Beckett
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The patients seeing so much of the nurses and so little of the doctor, it was natural that they should regard the former as their persecutors and the latter as their savior.
Samuel Beckett
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If I were in the unenviable position of having to study my work my points of departure would be the "Naught is more real..." and the "Ubi nihil vales..." both already in Murphy and neither very rational.
Samuel Beckett
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Clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most
Samuel Beckett
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Samuel Beckett
Creative Commons
Born:
April 13, 1906
Died:
December 22, 1989
(aged 83)
Bio:
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French.
Known for:
Waiting for Godot (1952)
Endgame (1957)
Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
Happy Days (1960)
Not I (1972)
Most used words:
time
life
speak
pause
day
vladimir
silence
estragon
story
laugh
eyes
god
worse
place
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