Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 7

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Waiting, Why Not, Waiting For Godot

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.438, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Never Forget, Forget

  1955 Waiting for Godot, act 2.

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• All I say cancels out, I’ll have said nothing.

  Samuel Beckett

  Said

  Samuel Beckett (1967). “Stories & Texts for Nothing”, p.28, Grove Press

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• I am such a good man, at bottom, such a good man, how is it that nobody ever noticed it?

  Samuel Beckett

  Men, Good Man, Goodness

  "Malone Dies". Book by Samuel Beckett, 1951.

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• I gave up before birth.

  Samuel Beckett

  Birth, Futility, Gave Up

  Samuel Beckett (1995). “The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989”, p.232, Grove Press

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• How hideous is the semicolon.

  Samuel Beckett

  Hideous

  Samuel Beckett (1959). “Watt”, Grove Pr

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• The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never.

  Samuel Beckett

  Interesting, May, Matter

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!

  Samuel Beckett

  Answers

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Endgame and Act Without Words”, p.46, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The only sin is the sin of being born.

  Samuel Beckett

  Sin, Born

  "Samuel Beckett Talks About Beckett". Vogue, December 1969.

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• Light black. From pole to pole.

  Samuel Beckett

  Light, Black

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Endgame and Act Without Words”, p.39, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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.

  Samuel Beckett

  Reality, Men, Thinking

  Samuel Beckett (1955). “Molloy: A Novel”, p.115, Grove Press

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• Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.

  Samuel Beckett

  Thinking, Mind, Want

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “Molloy”, p.28, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.

  Samuel Beckett

  Godot, Said, Ifs

  "The Essential Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Biography". Book by Enoch Brater, p. 75, 2003.

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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

  Thinking, Impossible, Speak

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.15, Faber & Faber

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• Imagination at wit's end spreads its sad wings.

  Samuel Beckett

  Sad, Frustration, Wings

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still”, p.41, Faber & Faber

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• There's no lack of void.

  Samuel Beckett

  Void

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts”, p.72, Faber & Faber

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• 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.

  Samuel Beckett

  Heart, Thinking, Escaping

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “Molloy”, p.32, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Play

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• Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.

  Samuel Beckett

  Spiritual, Philosophical, Perfect

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• But he had hardly felt the absurdity of those things, on the one hand, and the necessity of those others, on the other, (for it is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity), when he felt the absurdity of those things of which he had just felt the necessity (for it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity.)

  Samuel Beckett

  Hands, Feelings, Absurdity

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Watt”, p.97, Faber & Faber

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• Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Reality, Literature

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Riverrun Pr

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• Tears and laughter, they are so much Gaelic to me.

  Samuel Beckett

  Laughter, Tears, Gaelic

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.261, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening.

  Samuel Beckett

  Love, Names, Evening

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.170, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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.

  Samuel Beckett

  Expression, Firsts, Language

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.43, Faber & Faber

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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

  Success, Couple, Home

  Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider, Maurice Harmon (1998). “No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider”, p.492, Harvard University Press

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