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

ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me! VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you? ESTRAGON: You let me go.

Samuel Beckett

The more people I meet the happier I become.

Samuel Beckett

We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?

Samuel Beckett

VLADIMIR: Moron! ESTRAGON: Vermin! VLADIMIR: Abortion! ESTRAGON: Morpion! VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat! ESTRAGON: Curate! VLADIMIR: Cretin! ESTRAGON: ( ). Crritic! VLADIMIR: Oh!

Samuel Beckett

VLADIMIR: ( ). We'll see when the time comes. ( ) I was saying that things have changed here since yesterday. ESTRAGON: Everything oozes. VLADIMIR: Look at the tree. ESTRAGON: It's never the same pus from one second to the next. VLADIMIR: The tree, l...

Samuel Beckett

To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.

Samuel Beckett

(Looking at the tree) Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.

Samuel Beckett

Vladimir: That passed the time. Estragon: It would have passed in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.

Samuel Beckett

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett

Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name...

Samuel Beckett

But we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inc...

Samuel Beckett

But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

Samuel Beckett

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

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

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

Samuel Beckett

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

Samuel Beckett

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

Samuel Beckett

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I b...

Samuel Beckett

Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

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