Samuel Beckett Quotes

Irish writer (1906–1989)

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Samuel Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote mainly in English and French.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Andrew Belis

Alternative Names: Samuel Barclay Beckett • Sam Beckett • Sa-miao-erh Pei-kʻo-tʻe • Samuel Beḳeṭ

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I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.

Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.

Molloy · January 12, 1994 Verified in 2 sources · 1 more available Sign up to see the complete provenance

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[A]ll I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.

I've got my faults, but changing my tune isn't one of them.

It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.

let us say before i go any further, that i forgive nobody. i wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!'
'But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world and look at my TROUSERS!

I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits.

When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.