Samuel Beckett

“Look, she said stooping over her breasts, the haloes are darkening already. I summoned up my remaining strength and said, Abort, abort and they'll blush like new.”

“But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection, physically too, from time to time, it's the common lot, even I was not immune, if that can be called an erection. It did not escape her naturally, women smell a rigid phallus ten miles away and wonder, How on earth did he spot me from there?”

“So that I would have hesitated to exclaim, with my finger up my arse-hole for example, Jesus Christ, it's much worse than yesterday, I can hardly believe it is the same hole.”

“The whisky bears a grudge against the decanter.”

“And yet I am afraid, afraid of what my words will do to me, to my refuge, yet again.... If I could speak and yet say nothing, really nothing? Then I might escape being gnawed to death.”

“The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.”

“She dragged me across the floor, stopping from time to time only to kick me. I didn't know our cows too could be so inhuman.”

“On a le temps de viellir. L'air est plein de nos cris. Mais l'habitude est une grande sourdine.”

“Nous naissons tous fous. Quelques-uns le demeurent.”

“On trouve toujours quelque chose, hein, Didi, pour nous donner l'impression d'exister?”

“POZZO:Non piange più. (A Estragone) In un certo senso l'ha sostituito lei. (Pensieroso) Le lacrime del mondo sono immutabili. Non appena qualcuno si mette a piangere, qualcun altro, chissà dove, smette. E così per il riso. (Ride) Non diciamo troppo male, perciò, della nostra epoca; non è più disgraziata delle precedenti. (Pausa) Ma non diciamone neanche troppo bene. (Pausa) Non parliamone affatto. (Pausa) È vero, però, che la popolazione è aumentata.”

“He speaks of himself as of another. Himself he devises too for company. Leave it at that. Confusion too is company up to a point. Better hope deferred than none. Up to a point. Till the heart starts to sicken. Company too up to a point. Better a sick heart than none. Till it starts to break. So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that.”

“But I did not yet know, at that time, how tender the earth can be for those who have only her and how many graves in her giving, for the living."First Love”

“I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.”

“Dünyadaki gözyaşı miktarı sabittir. Ağlamaya başlayan biri için, bir yerlerde bir başkası keser ağlamayı. Aynı şey gülmek için de geçerlidir. (Güler.) Bizim kuşak için kötü şeyler söylemeyelim öyleyse, önceki kuşaklardan daha bedbaht değiliz çünkü.”

“There is no escape from the hours and the days. Neither from tomorrow nor from yesterday, because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us... We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday”

“Onca zamandan sonra, güneşli rüzgarı sevenle rüzgarlı güneşi sevenin yeniden birlikte olmaları az şey mi doğrusu,az şey mi?”

“Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.”

“Yes, I feel the moment has come for me to look back, if I can, and take my bearings, if I am to go on. If only I knew what I had been saying. Bah, no need to worry, it can only have been one thing, the same as ever. I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them. I have only to go on, as if there was something to be done, something begun, somewhere to go. It all boils down to a question of words, I must not forget this, I have not forgotten it. But I must have said this before, since I say it now.”

“It's a lot to ask of one creature, it's a lot to ask, that he should first behave as if he were not, then as if he were, before being admitted to that peace where he neither is, nor is not, and where the language dies that permits of such expressions.”

“God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!''But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world and look at my TROUSERS!”

“There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.”

“You may say it is all in my head, and indeed sometimes it seems to me I am in a head and that these eight, no, six, these six planes that enclose me are of solid bone. But thence to conclude the head is mine, no, never.”

“In a word there seems to be the light of the outer world, of those who know the sun and moon emerge at such an hour and such another plunge again below the surface, and who rely on this, and who know that clouds are always to be expected but sooner or later always pass away, and mine. But mine too has its alterations, I will not deny it, its dusks and dawns, but that is what I say, for I too must have lived, once, out there, and there is no recovering from that.”

“Live and invent. I have tried. I must have tried. Invent. It is not the word. Neither is to live. No matter. I have tried. [...] I say living without knowing what it is. I tried to live without knowing what I was trying. Perhaps I have lived afterall, without knowing.”

“The little cloud drifting before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.”

“Yes, now my mind is easy, I know the game is won, I lost them all till now, but it's the last that counts. A very fine achievement I must say, or rather would, if I did not fear to contradict myself. Fear to contradict myself! If this continues it is myself I shall lose and the thousand ways that lead there. And I shall resemble the wretches famed in fable, crushed beneath the weight of their wish come true. And I even feel a strange desire come over me, the desire to know what I am doing, and why. So I near the goal I set myself in my young days and which prevented me from living. And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another. Very pretty.”

“I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone. There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got there thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages,so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work any more. That doesn't matter apparently. What I'd like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my good-byes, finish dying. They don't want that. Yes, there is more than one, apparently. But it's always the same one that comes. You'll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is I haven't much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week's. They are marked with signs I don't understand ... Here's my beginning. It must mean something, or they wouldn't keep it. Here it is.”

“Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that!”

“All is ready. Except me. I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth to into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the great cunt of existence. Favourable presentation I trust. My head will be the last to die. Haul in your hands. I can't. The render rent. My story ended I'll be living yet. Promising lag. That is the end of me. I shall say I no more.”

“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.”

“I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”

“We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?”

“But how much more pleasant was the sensation of being a missile without provenance or target, caught up in a tumult of non-Newtonian motion. So pleasant that pleasant was not the word.”

“The search for myself is ended. I am buried in the world, I knew I would find my place there one day, the old world cloisters me, victorious. I am happy, I knew I would be happy one day. But I am not wise. For the wise thing now would be to let go, at this instant of happiness. And what do I do? I go back again to the light, to the fields I so longed to love, to the sky all astir with little white clouds as white and light as snowflakes, to the life I could never manage, through my own fault perhaps, through pride, or pettiness, but I don't think so.”

“Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.”

“I could die today, if I wished, merely by making a little effort, if I could wish, if I could make an effort. But it is just as well to let myself die, quietly, without rushing things. Something must have changed. I will not weigh upon the balance any more, one way or the other.”

“Unhappy, but not unhappy enough.”

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.”

“But in the end I understood this language. I understood it, I understand it, all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters. It told me to write the report. Does this mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know. I shall learn. Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.”

“What was God doing with himself before the creation?”

“For I shall be far away, before these lines are read, in a place where no one will dream of coming to look for me.”

“I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.”

“Sometimes I went and looked at my grave. The stone was up already. It was a simple Latin cross, white. I wanted to have my name put on it, with the here lies and the date of my birth. Then all it would have wanted was the date of my death. They would not let me. Sometimes I smiled, as if I were dead already.”

“All is tedious, in this relation that is forced upon me.”

“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 it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.”

“I am still alive then. That may come in useful.”

“But all this was nothing compared to the face which I regret to say vaguely resembled my own, less the refinement of course, same little abortive moustache, same little ferrety eyes, same paraphimosis of the nose, and a thin red mouth that looked as if it was raw from trying to shit its tongue.”

“Bloom of adulthood. Try a whiff of that. On your back in the dark you remember. Ah you remember. Cloudless May day. She joins you in the little summerhouse. Entirely of logs. Both larch and fir. Six feet across. Eight from floor to vertex. Area twenty-four square feet to the furthest decimal. Two small multicoloured lights vis-a-vis. Small stained diamond panes. Under each a ledge. There on summer Sundays after his midday meal your father loved to retreat with Punch and a cushion. The waist of his trousers unbuttoned he sat on the one ledge and turned the pages. You on the other your feet dangling. When he chuckled you tried to chuckle too. When his chuckle died yours too. That you should try to imitate his chuckle pleased and amused him greatly and sometimes he would chuckle for no other reason than to hear you try to chuckle too. Sometimes you turn your head and look out through a rose-red pane. You press your little nose against the pane and all without is rosy. The years have flown and there at the same place as then you sit in the bloom of adulthood bathed in rainbow light gazing before you. She is late.”

“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made.”