I do nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the only thing… - Samuel Beckett
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I do nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the only thing worth doing. There is an ecstasy of accidia — will-less in a grey tumult of idées obscures. There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite scorchings & consolations. It is good for children & insects. There is an end of making up one's mind, like a pound of tea, an end of patting the butter of consciousness into opinions. The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments.
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.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Roger Pic (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Pen Names:
Andrew Belis
Alternative Names:
Samuel Barclay Beckett
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Sam Beckett
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Sa-miao-erh Pei-kʻo-tʻe
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Samuel Beḳeṭ
Having heard, or more probably read somewhere, in the days when I thought I would be well advised to educate myself, or amuse myself, or stupefy myself, or kill time, that 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 in this way to go in a straight line. For I stopped being half-witted and became sly, whenever I took the trouble … and if I did not go in a rigorously straight line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a circle, and that was something.
She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.
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