Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 9

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• Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all that is over, no, for the being over, words have been my only loves, not many.

  Samuel Beckett

  Heart, Language, Only Love

  Samuel Beckett (1974). “First Love and Other Shorts”, p.48, Grove Press

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• I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.

  Samuel Beckett

  Writing, Want, Ends

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.201, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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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

  Reality, Figures, Realism

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• Where am I, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

  Samuel Beckett

  Silence, Identity, Goes On

  The Unnamable (1959)

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• I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

  Samuel Beckett

  Book, Writing, Exercise

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.201, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

  Samuel Beckett

  Suicide, Home, Lingering

  All That Fall (1957) p. 10

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• Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it for the time needed for it to love it and you it, then throw it away.

  Samuel Beckett

  Love, Loneliness, Despair

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Misery, Enough, Pauses

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Fall, Night, Darkness

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• Sloth is all passions the most powerful.

  Samuel Beckett

  Powerful, Passion, Sloth

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• Was I asleep? Had I slept?

  Samuel Beckett

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• Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one.

  Samuel Beckett

  Loneliness, Lost Ones, Body

  Samuel Beckett (1995). “The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989”, p.202, Grove Press

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• She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.

  Samuel Beckett

  Next, Firsts, Ends

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.96, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• James Joyce: His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.

  Samuel Beckett

  Writing, Joyce

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• The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.

  Samuel Beckett

  Mean, Speech, Ends

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.12, Faber & Faber

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• My keepers, why keepers, I'm in no danger of stirring an inch, ah I see, it's to make me think I'm a prisoner, frantic with corporeality, rearing to get out and away.

  Samuel Beckett

  Thinking, Danger, Inches

  Samuel Beckett (1967). “Stories & Texts for Nothing”, p.101, Grove Press

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• What is more true than anything else? To swim is true and to sink is true. One cannot speak any more of being, one must speak onlyof the mess.

  Samuel Beckett

  Truth, Swim, Speak

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• Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.

  Samuel Beckett

  Funny, Hilarious, Ireland And The Irish

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• Yes, light, there is no other word for it.

  Samuel Beckett

  Light

  Samuel Beckett (2010). “The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett: All That Fall, Act Without Words, Krapp's Last Tape, Cascando, Eh Joe, Footfall, Rockaby and others”, p.62, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it.

  Samuel Beckett

  Men, Vices, Virtue

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• To find a form that accommodates the shape of the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

  Samuel Beckett

  Artist, Mess

  Source: therumpus.net

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• They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance.

  Samuel Beckett

  Baby, Children, Matter

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.218, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.

  Samuel Beckett

  Time, Hair, Age

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.94, Faber & Faber

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• We could have saved sixpence. We could have saved fivepence. But at what cost?

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Philosophy, History

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• I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.

  Samuel Beckett

  Memories, Lying, Writing

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