746 Quotes by Samuel Beckett

Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and thatto compress it further can only make it more obscure?

The whisky bears a grudge against the decanter.

I knew it would soon be the end, so I played the part, you know, the part of — how shall I say, I don’t know.

And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept.

All mankind is us, whether we like it or not.

All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.

That's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.

Never but the one matter. The dead and gone. The dying and going. From the word go.

We should have thought of it when the world was young, in the nineties.