746 Quotes by Samuel Beckett

What do you do when you fall far from help?

I’m no longer with these assassins, in this bed of terror, but in my distant refuge, my hands twined together, my head bowed, weak, breathless, calm, free, and older than I’ll ever have been, if my calculations are correct. I’ll tell my story in the past none the less, as though it were a myth, or an old fable, for this evening I need another age in which I became what I was.

It is to be hoped the time will come, thank God, in some circles it already has, when language is best used where it is most efficiently abused. Since we cannot dismiss it all at once, at least we do not want to leave anything undone that may contribute to its disrepute. To drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.

Hell itself, although eternal, dates from the revolt of Lucifer. It is therefore permissible, in the light of this distant analogy, to think of myself as being here for ever, but not as having been here for ever.

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 inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.

And at the thought of the punishments Youdi might inflict upon me I was seized by such a mighty fit of laughter that I shook, with mightly silent laughter and my features composed in their wonted sadness and calm. But my whole body shook, and even my legs, so that I had to lean against a tree, or against a bush, when the fit came on me standing, my umbrella being no longer sufficient to keep me from falling. Strange laughter truly, and no doubt misnamed.

And he said also, by way of a rider, that even if he had the whole night before him, in which to rest, and grow warm, on a chair, in the kitchen, even then it would be a poor resting, and a mean warming, beside the rest and warmth that he remembered, the rest and warmth that he awaited, a very poor resting indeed, and a paltry warming, and so in any case very likely a source, in the long run, less of gratification, than of annoyance.

The inspection once completed it is usual to put everything carefully back in place as far as possible. It is enjoined by a certain ethics not to do unto others what coming from them might give offence.

After all this window is whatever I want it to be, up to a point, that’s right, don’t compromise yourself. What strikes me to begin with is how much rounder it is than it was, so that it looks like a bull’s-eye, or a porthole. No matter, provided there is something on the other side.