Samuel Beckett

“Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.”

“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 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.)”

“[A]ll I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.”

“Nothing to be done..”

“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. 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! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”

“No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.”

“All I know is that the hours are long... and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which ... may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit.”

“Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.”

“Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.”

“Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.”

“For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.”

“Here he stood. Here he sat. Here he knelt. Here he lay. Here he moved, to and fro, from the door to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the bed.”

“Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.”

“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.”

“Personally I always preferred Lipton's.”

“Nothing is more real than nothing.”

“But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.”

“I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.”

“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.”

“The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere. The essential is to go on squirming forever at the edge of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting God to plague his creature, per pro his chosen shits. I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but strech out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for eternity.”

“HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something?CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!(Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!”

“Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing.”

“Vladimir: Did I ever leave you?Estragon: You let me go.”

“I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, subtracting rather than adding. When I first met Joyce, I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching. When I found I simply couldn't teach. But I do remember speaking about Joyce's heroic achievement. I had a great admiration for him. That's what it was: epic, heroic, what he achieved. I realized that I couldn't go down that same road.”

“I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.”

“But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.”

“I cannot explain my plays. Each must find out for himself what is meant”

“That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead.”

“It is to be hoped the time will come, thank God, in some circles it already has, when language is best used where it is most efficiently abused. Since we cannot dismiss it all at once, at least we do not want to leave anything undone that may contribute to its disrepute. To drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through - I cannot imagine a higher goal for today's writer.”

“Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.”

“...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”

“ Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (pause) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can't go on! (Pause.) What have I said? ”

“L'humanité ... est un puits à deux seaux. Pendant que l'un descend pour être rempli, l'autre monte pour être vidé.”

“You cried for night - it falls. Now cry in darkness.”

“How hideous is the semicolon.”

“And at the thought of the punishments Youdi might inflict upon me I was seized by such a mighty fit of laughter that I shook, with mightly silent laughter and my features composed in their wonted sadness and calm. But my whole body shook, and even my legs, so that I had to lean against a tree, or against a bush, when the fit came on me standing, my umbrella being no longer sufficient to keep me from falling. Strange laughter truly, and no doubt misnamed.”

“For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.”

“But it is useless to dwell on this period of my life. If I go on long enough calling that my life I'll end up by believing it.”

“But I pushed and pulled in vain, the wheels would not turn. It was as though the brakes were jammed, and heaven knows they were not, for my bicycle had no brakes. And suddenly overcome by a great weariness, in spite of the dying day when I always felt most alive, I threw the bicycle back in the bush and lay down on the ground, on the grass, careless of the dew, I never feared the dew.”

“Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains.”

“What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.”

“It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.”

“Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.”

“Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand.”

“Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”

“ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.VLADIMIR: That's what you think.”

“que ferais-je sans ce monde que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questionsoù être ne dure qu'un instant où chaque instantverse dans le vide dans l'oubli d'avoir étésans cette onde où à la fincorps et ombre ensemble s'engloutissentque ferais-je sans ce silence gouffre des murmureshaletant furieux vers le secours vers l'amoursans ce ciel qui s'élèvesur la poussieère de ses lestsque ferais-je je ferais comme hier comme aujourd'huiregardant par mon hublot si je ne suis pas seulà errer et à virer loin de toute viedans un espace pantinsans voix parmi les voixenfermées avec moi Translation...what would I do without this world what would I do without this world faceless incuriouswhere to be lasts but an instant where every instantspills in the void the ignorance of having beenwithout this wave where in the endbody and shadow together are engulfedwhat would I do without this silence where the murmurs diethe pantings the frenzies towards succour towards lovewithout this sky that soarsabove its ballast dustwhat would I do what I did yesterday and the day beforepeering out of my deadlight looking for anotherwandering like me eddying far from all the livingin a convulsive spaceamong the voices voicelessthat throng my hiddenness”