Samuel Beckett Quotes

Yes, yes, I am mistaken, I am mistaken.

The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.

By nature I mean here, like the naïvest realist, a composite of perceiver and perceived, not a datum, an experience. All I wish to suggest is that the tendency and accomplishment of this painting are fundamentally those of previous painting, straining to enlarge the statement of a compromise.

To contrive a little kingdom, in the midst of the universal muck, then shit on it, ah that was me all over.

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.

Do you ever think? The voice, God forbid.

A mask of dirty old hairy leather, with two holes and a slit, it was too far gone for the old trick of please your honour and God reward you and pity upon me. It was disastrous.

I felt weak, perhaps I was.

My appearance still made people laugh, with that hearty jovial laugh so good for the health.

I didn’t feel well, but they told me I was well enough. They didn’t say in so many words that I was as well as I would ever be, but that was the implication.

To think that in a moment all will be said, all to do again.

How tell what remains ? But it’s the end. Or have I been dreaming, am I dreaming? No no, none of that, for dream is nothing, a joke, and significant what is worse.

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.

It’s to me this evening something has to happen, to my body as in myth and metamorphosis, this old body to which nothing ever happened, or so little, which never met with anything, wished for anything, in its tarnished universe, except for the mirrors to shatter, the plane, the curved, the magnifying, the minifying, and to vanish in the havoc of its images.

All I say cancels out, I’ll have said nothing.