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

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

Samuel Beckett

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Samuel Beckett

Words are all we have.

Samuel Beckett

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Samuel Beckett

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

Samuel Beckett

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

Samuel Beckett

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

Samuel Beckett

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

Samuel Beckett

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.

Samuel Beckett

The only sin is the sin of being born

Samuel Beckett

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

Samuel Beckett

Was I asleep? Had I slept?

Samuel Beckett

Dying for dark - the darker the worse. Strange.

Samuel Beckett

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett

Estragon: They're too big Vladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day

Samuel Beckett

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 sent...

Samuel Beckett

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

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