Samuel Beckett

“I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.”

“But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.”

“I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.”

“It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.”

“Birth was the death of him.”

“I was merely cursing, under my breath, God and man, under my breath, and the wet Saturday afternoon of my conception.”

“Estragon: Hepimiz deli doğarız. Bazılarımız öyle kalır.”

“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.”

“I shall not speak of my sufferings. Cowering deep down among them I feel nothing. It is there I die, unbeknown to my stupid flesh. That which is seen, that which cries and writhes, my witless remains. Somewhere in the turmoil thought struggles on, it too wide of the mark. It too seeks me, as it always has, where I am not to be found.”

“Vladimir:-Cuando uno piensa, oye.Estragon:-Cierto.Vladimir:-Y eso impide reflexionar.Estragon:-Claro.Vladimir:-Impide pensar.Estragon:-De todos modos se piensa.Vladimir:-¡Qué va!, resulta imposible.Estragon:-Eso es, contradigámonos.Vladimir: Imposible.Estragon:-¿Tú crees?Vladimir:-Ya no nos arriesgamos a pensar.Estragon:-Entonces, ¿De qué nos lamentamos?”

“We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.”

“Do you believe in the life to come? Mine was always that.”

“Estragon:-¿Cuál es nuestro papel en este asunto?Vladimir:-¿Nuestro papel?Estragon:-Tómate tiempo.Vladimir:-¿Nuestro papel? El del suplicante.Estragon:-¿Hasta este extremo?Vladimir: ¿El señor tiene exigencias que hacer valer?Estragon:-¿Ya no tenemos derechos?(Risa de Vladimir, quien se reprime como antes. Mismos gestos, salvo la sonrisa)Vladimir:-Me harías reír si me estuviera permitido.Estragon:-¿Los hemos perdido?Vladimir (con claridad):-Los hemos vendido.”

“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.”

“What I liked in anthropology was its inexhaustible faculty of negation, its relentless definition of man, as though he were no better than God, in terms of what he is not. But my ideas on this subject were always horribly confused, for my knowledge of men was scant and the meaning of being beyond me.”

“Vladimir: What do we do now?Estragon: Wait.Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting.Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?Estragon: Let's hang ourselves immediately!”

“But what's all this about not being able to die, live, be born? That must have some bearing. All this about staying where you are, dying, living, being born, unable to go forwards or back, not knowing where you came from, or where you are, or where you're going, or that it's possible to be elsewhere, to be otherwise? Supposing nothing, asking yourself nothing? You can't, you're there.”

“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.”

“A cheval sur une tombe et une naissance difficile. Du fond du trou, rêveusement, le fossoyeur applique ses fers. On a le temps de vieillir. L'air est plein de nos cris.”

“Ah, já me tinha esquecido do pénis. Que pena já não ter braços, talvez houvesse alguma coisa a lucrar com ele.”

“So all things limp together for the only possible.”

“Gimdyti apsižergus kapą ir kančiose gimti. Duobėje duobkasys svajingai tvarkosi įrankius. Lieka laiko susenti. Ore skamba mūsų riksmai.”

“The sensation of the seat of a chair coming together with his drooping posteriors at last was so delicious that he rose at once and repeated the sit, lingeringly and with intense concentration. Murphy did not so often meet with these tendernesses that he could afford to treat them casually. The second sit, however, was a great disappointment.”

“Your mind, never active at anytime, is now even less than ever so.”

“There is man in his entirety, blaming his shoe when his foot is guilty.”

“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think…Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. 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. To hell with it anyway.”

“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.”

“Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.”

“My anger subsides, I'd like to pee.”

“NO MATTER. TRY AGAIN. FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.”

“But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.”

“Dance first, think later.”

“Words are the clothes thoughts wear.”

“What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that, and I'm not sure of it.”

“كل شيء يدعو لجلوس القرفصاء .”

“Lacrimile lumii sunt imuabile. Pentru fiecare om care începe să plângă, un altul, undeva, se opreşte din plâns. La fel e şi cu râsul.”

“There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.”

“Try. Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”

“There's no lack of void.”

“Once a certain degree of insight has been reached," said Wylie, "all men talk, when talk they must, the same tripe.”

“The essential doesn't change.”

“estragon: we lost our rights?vladimir: we got rid of them.”

“I began playing with the cries, a little in the same way as I had played with the song, on, back, on, back, if that may be called playing. As long as I kept walking I didn’t hear them, because of the footsteps. But as soon as I halted again I heard them again, a little fainter each time, admittedly, but what does it matter, faint or loud, cry is cry, all that matters is that it should cease. For years I thought they would cease. Now I don’t think so any more. I could have done with other loves perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don’t.”

“There I am then back in the saddle, in my numbed heart a prick of misgiving, like one dying of cancer obliged to consult his dentist.”

“A quem nada tem é proibido não amar a merda.”

“Estragon: Suppose we repented.Vladimir: Repented what?Estragon: Oh...(He reflects.) We wouldn’t have to go into the details.Vladimir: Our being born?”

“On turning to the Work in Progress we find that the mirror is not so convex. Here is direct expression--pages and pages of it. And if you don’t understand it, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is because you are too decadent to receive it. You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one almost without bothering to read the other. This rapid skimming and absorption of the scant cream of sense is made possible by what I may call a continuous process of copious intellectual salivation. The form that is an arbitrary and independent phenomenon can fulfil no higher function than that of stimulus for a tertiary or quartary conditioned reflex of dribbling comprehension. . . Mr. Joyce has a word to say to you on the subject: “Yet to concentrate solely on the literal sense or even the psychological content of any document to the sore neglect of the enveloping facts themselves circumstantiating it is just as harmful; etc.” And another: “Who in his hearts doubts either that the facts of feminine clothiering are there all the time or that the feminine fiction, stranger than facts, is there also at the same time, only a little to the rere? Or that one may be separated from the orther? Or that both may be contemplated simultaneously? Or that each may be taken up in turn and considered apart from the other?”Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read--or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.”

“When are they going to stop making me mean more than I say?”

“When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.”