746 Quotes by Samuel Beckett

So I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended. But it was nothing, mere speechlessness due to long silence, as in the wood that darkens the mouth of hell, do you remember, I only just.

I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.

At last I began to think, that is to say to listen harder.

Why then the human voice, rather than a hyena’s howls or the clanging of a hammer? Answer, so that the shock may not be too great, when the writhings of true lips meet his gaze. Between them they find a rejoinder to everything. And how they enjoy talking, they know there is no worse torment, for one not in the conversation.

What kind of country is this where a woman can’t weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired bill-brokers!

That’s what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead.

I cannot explain my plays. Each must find out for himself what is meant.

Does it really matter which hand is employed to absterge the podex?

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