746 Quotes by Samuel Beckett

God knows I’m not intelligent otherwise I’d be dead.

Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little yellow flame feebly darting from side to side, panting, as if straining to tear itself from its wick, it should never have been lit, or it should never have been fed, or it should have been put out, put out, it should have been let go out.

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.

Here all is strange.

Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity.

And Watt’s need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.

Hamm: There’s something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.

No choice but stand. Somehow up and stand. Somehow stand. That or groan. The groan so long on its way. No. No groan. Simply pain. Simply up. A time when try how. Try see. Try say. How first it lay. Then somehow knelt. Bit by bit. Then on from there. Bit by bit. Till up at last.

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