Beckett Quotes

• I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.

  Harold Pinter

  Unique, Men, Thinking

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• Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

  Samuel Beckett

  Unhappiness, Endgame

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Endgame and Act Without Words”, p.26, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

  Samuel Beckett

  Beauty, Long, Phrases

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

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

  Samuel Beckett

  Nice, Wish, Stage

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.242, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

  Samuel Beckett

  Alternatives, Sun, Murphy

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.71, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Beckett had an unerring light on things, which I much appreciated.

  Harold Pinter

  Light, Literature, Appreciated

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• As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

  John Hurt

  Forgotten, Enough, Said

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. April 27, 2000.

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• 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.

  Samuel Beckett

  Rams, Useless, Want

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Watt”, p.33, Faber & Faber

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• Beckett does not believe in God, though he seems to imply that God has committed an unforgivable sin by not existing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Believe, Unforgivable Sin, Doe

  Anthony Burgess (1971). “The Novel To-day”

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• The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.

  Val Kilmer

  Play, Saws, Firsts

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• Where do I begin? I loved working with Kate Hepburn, which was one of the highlights of my life; Working with Richard Burton in Beckett was another great joy.

  Peter O'Toole

  Joy, Highlights, Kate

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• Artemis: "Right, brothers. Onward. Imagine yourself seated at a cafe in Montmartre." Myles: "In Paris." Artemis: "Yes, Paris. And try as you will, you cannot attract the waiter's attention. What do you do?" Beckett: "Umm...tell Butler to jump-jump-jump on his head?" Myles: "I agree with simple-toon." Artemis: "No! You simply raise one finger and say clearly 'ici, garcon.'" Beckett: "Itchy what?

  Eoin Colfer

  Brother, Simple, Paris

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• I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance.

  Michel Foucault

  Eye, Waiting, Generations

  Michel Foucault (2000). “Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel”, p.176, A&C Black

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• You got used to running things on your own." "What could he do about it when he's in Iraq and the car breaks down in Kansas?" Beckett gave her a long, quiet look. "I'm not in Iraq." "No, and it has to be said, I'm not in Kansas anymore." She lifted her hands, then let them fall. "It's not that I've forgotten how to be a couple, but that my experience in being part of one is different from yours. Maybe from most people's. And I've been on my own a long time." "Now you're not. I'm not fighting a war, and I'm right here." Needed to be here, he realized, with her.

  Nora Roberts

  Running, Couple, War

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• These are your beautiful days, Julia Beckett," he promised softly.

  Susanna Kearsley

  Beautiful, Julia, Your Beautiful

  Susanna Kearsley (2009). “Mariana”, p.268, Allison & Busby

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• Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.

  Edward Albee

  Going Away, Unions, Stuff

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.

  William S. Burroughs

  Modern, Joyce, Wells

  Source: www.litkicks.com

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• The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.

  Edward Albee

  Feelings, Having Fun, Reservations

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• [Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them.

  Anthony Minghella

  Artist, Thinking, Sometimes

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• The Australian Gerald Murnane, a genius on the level of Beckett, is known in Australia and Sweden but almost nowhere else. And I loved Reality Hunger, David Shields' recent novel take on the art of the novel.

  Teju Cole

  Art, Reality, Australia

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I’m too young and ridiculous a person to speak for my generation, but I’d be happy to talk about my own experiences as a generation Y writer. I was raised by a generation of hippies. Throughout my childhood, teachers urged me to fight the establishment. My English teacher assigned Ginsberg and Kerouac and declared Bob Dylan “a genius.” My science teacher told me that television was “the new opiate of the masses” and bragged about never having owned one. My drama teacher made us perform Beckett.

  Simon Rich

  Teacher, Drama, Hippie

  "Ridiculously Rich: The Rumpus Interview With Simon Rich". Interview with Maureen Miller, therumpus.net. June 9, 2010.

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• The conversation with the dead is one of the great pleasures of life. Somebody who is sitting reading Chekhov, Beckett, reading Toni Morrison - you are not in any way dead, in many ways you are intensely alive.

  Cornel West

  Reading, Sitting, Alive

  Source: genius.com

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• When the animal becomes human, the effect is pleasingly benign and we laugh outloud, "Okay come clean now. This isn't really about hunting, is it?" But when the human becomes animal, the effect is disgusting, and if we laugh at all, then it is what Beckett calls the "mirthless laugh", which laughs at that which is unhappy.

  Simon Critchley

  Animal, Hunting, Laughing

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• My favourite writer is Beckett and I keep going back to wallow in his work like a deep pool of dark humour or like an oxygen tank when you can't breath in a world consumed by piety, hypocrisy and self-satisfaction.

  Simon Critchley

  Dark, Self, Oxygen

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• At Princeton I wrote my junior paper on Virginia Woolf, and for my senior thesis I wrote on Samuel Beckett. I wrote some about "Between the Acts" and "Mrs. Dalloway'' but mostly about "To the Lighthouse." With Beckett I focused, perversely, on his novels, "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable." That's when I decided I should never write again.

  David Duchovny

  Senior, Writing, Virginia

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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