Quotes by Samuel Beckett

About Samuel Beckett:

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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-co...

Samuel Beckett

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

I can't go on, I'll go on.

Samuel Beckett

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.)

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

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.

Samuel Beckett

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.

Samuel Beckett

How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.

Samuel Beckett

I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. (Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.) Past midnight. Never knew such ...

Samuel Beckett

they come different and the same with each it is different and the same with each the absence of love is different with each the absence of love is the same

Samuel Beckett

There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.

Samuel Beckett

I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.

Samuel Beckett

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

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, wh...

Samuel Beckett

In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead.

Samuel Beckett

Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.

Samuel Beckett

She was willing a little bit of sweated labour, incapable of betraying the slogan of her slavers, that since the customer or sucker was paying for his gutrot ten times what it cost to produce and five times what it cost to fling in his face, it was o...

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.

Samuel Beckett

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...

Samuel Beckett

Author Bio

  • NameSamuel Beckett
  • DescriptionIrish novelist, playwright, and poet
  • AliasesSamuel Barclay Beckett; Andrew Belis
  • BornApril 13, 1906
  • DiedDecember 22, 1989
  • CountryIreland
  • ProfessionWriter; Linguist; Film Director; Screenwriter; Cricketer; Poet; Novelist; Playwright; Translator; Artist
  • WorksMurphy; Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable; Waiting For Godot; Watt; Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape; How It Is
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature