Samuel Beckett Quotes

“I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.”
― Edward Albee

“ESTRAGON: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

VLADIMIR: (impatiently). Yes, yes, we’re magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“If you do not love me I shall not be loved.
If I do not love you I shall not love.”
― Samuel Beckett

“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.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

“You lean back against the door with bowed head making ready to set out. By the time you open your eyes your feet have disappeared and the skirt of your great coat come to rest on the surface of the snow. The dark scene seems lit from below. You see yourself at the last outset leaning against the door with closed eyes waiting for the word from you to go. To be gone.Then the snowlit scene. You lie in the dark with closed eyes and see yourself there as described making ready to strike out and away across the expanse of light. You hear again the click of the door pulled gently to and the silence before the steps can start. Next thing you are on your way across the white pasture afrolic with lambs in spring and strewn with red placantae.”
― Samuel Beckett, Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho

“HAMM:
In my house.
(pause.)
One day you’ll be blind, like me. You’ll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me.
(pause.)
One day you’ll say to yourself, I’m tired, I’ll sit down, and you’ll go and sit down. Then you’ll say, I’m hungry, I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up. You’ll say, I shouldn’t have sat down, but since I have I’ll sit on a little longer, then I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up and you won’t get anything to eat.
(pause.)
You’ll look at the wall a while, then you’ll say, I’ll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I’ll feel better, and you’ll close them. And when you open them again there’ll be no wall any more.
(pause.)
Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn’t fill it, and there you’ll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe.
(pause.)
Yes, one day you’ll know what it is, you’ll be like me, except that you won’t have anyone with you, because you won’t have had pity on anyone and because there won’t be anyone left to have pity on.
(pause.)”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“It took me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realise that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Giudecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the eistence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise, It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Estragon: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“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 --”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“He thought of hanging himself, to pass the time.”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“story … if you could finish it … you could rest … you could sleep … not before … oh I know … the ones I’ve finished … thousands and one … all I ever did … in my life … with my life … saying to myself … finish this one … it’s the right one … then rest …”
― Samuel Beckett, The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett: All That Fall, Act Without Words, Krapp's Last Tape, Cascando, Eh Joe, Footfall, Rockaby and others

“Gimdyti apsižergus kapą ir kančiose gimti. Duobėje duobkasys svajingai tvarkosi įrankius. Lieka laiko susenti. Ore skamba mūsų riksmai.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Cascando"


why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives


saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you


unless they love you”
― Samuel Beckett

“My Halloween costume is Godot. I'm not showing up at the party, just texting the host every 10 minutes that I'm on my way.”
― Wynne McLaughlin

“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.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Try again, fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett

“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.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“VLADIMIR: Dance, hog!”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“The punchline of the story relates to an American academic saying of Beckett, 'He doesn't give a fuck about people. He's an artist.' At this point Beckett raised his voice above the clatter of afternoon tea and shouted, 'But I do give a fuck about people! I do give a fuck!”
― James Knowlson, Beckett Remembering/Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration

“…[Samuel Beckett’s] diaries contained so little overt condemnation of the Nazis, although no one who has read them could be in any doubt about how much Beckett - who was to join the French Resistance in the war – loathed the regime. …[But] Beckett was quick to pick up on the absurd, such as the story he heard involving a servant and a milkman. In order to prevent Rassenschande [racial impurity], no Aryan servant under forty-five was allowed to work in a Jewish household. When a puzzled milkman asked a Herr Levi’s Gentile housekeeper how come she worked for him she replied that she was partly Jewish. When subsequently her even more perplexed employer asked her why she had lied to the milkman, she replied that she could not possibly admit to being forty-five.”
― Julia Boyd, Travellers in the Third Reich

“Neyse ki gözkapaklarını kapamak söz konusu değil burada, yummak gereken ruh aslında, şu boşuna yadsınmaya çalışılan uyanık, kaygılı ruh; limansız, gemisiz, tözsüz, tinsiz gecede bir fenerin içindeymiş gibi debelenip duran ruh.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“Ama anlama duyulan bu ilgisizlik içinde bu anlam arayışı da ne oluyordu?”
― Samuel Beckett, Watt

“მოდიან
სხვები მაგრამ მაინც იგივეები
თითოეული სხვანაირად და მაინც ისე
და თითოეულს სხვანაირად არ უყვარს ისევ
და თითოეულს ზუსტად ისე არ უყვარს ისევ”
― Samuel Beckett

“No soy, ¿es menester decirlo?, ni Murphy, ni Watt, ni Mercier -no, no quiero volver a nombrarlos- ni ninguno de los otros, de los cuales he olvidado hasta los nombres, que me dijeron que yo era ellos, que debía intentar serlo, a la fuerza, por miedo.”
― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

“Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett”
― Samuel Beckett

“Godot, take your time! I am scrolling the internet.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“Just got a text message from Godot: Bk sn.”
― Alan C. Baird

“Beckett has frequently been regarded as an arch ‘miserabilist’. This seems to me to be a misrepresentation of the man and a distortion of his work. Though he was intense and often depressed, the hundreds of letters from which I quote reveal a Beckett whom his friends knew extremely well: a witty, resilient man whose reflex response to adversity was often humour and the determination to go on.”
― James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett

“I call it it doesn't come I can't live without it I call it with all my strength it's not strong enough”
― Samuel Beckett, How It Is

“Samuel Beckett once described tears as 'liquefied brain,' and that was just how I felt; everything inside me was being melted down into one trembling pool.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise