Samuel Beckett
All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.Collection: Might
To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.Collection: Art
The time is perhaps not altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear, and more than the light of day (or night) makes the subsolar, -lunar, and -stellar excrement. Art is the sun, moon, and stars of the mind, the whole mind.Collection: Art
An imaginative adventure does not enjoy the same corsets as reportage.Collection: Art
I have nothing but wastes and wilds of self-translation before me for many miserable months to come.Collection: Self
We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness!Collection: Hands
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.Collection: Somewhere Else
The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to... (hesitates) ...me. (Pause.)Collection: Moving
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.Collection: Moving
The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint.Collection: Art
If I were in the unenviable position of having to study my work my points of departure would be the "Naught is more real ..." and the "Ubi nihil vales ..." both already in Murphy and neither very rational.Collection: Real
God is love. Yes or no? No.Collection: Love
Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.Collection: Thanks
Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.Collection: Dog
Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.Collection: Running
It was the only way to progress, to stop.Collection: Progress
I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.Collection: Silence
Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.Collection: Solitude
Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.Collection: Inspiring
The sky sinks in the morning, this fact has been insufficiently observed.Collection: Morning
But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.Collection: What Matters
The essential doesn't change.Collection: Essentials
That double-headed monster of damnation and salvation--Time.Collection: Time
The dust will not settle in our time. And when it does some great roaring machine will come and whirl it all skyhigh again.Collection: Art
Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clearCollection: Art
The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.Collection: Memories
Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.Collection: Time
It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger.Collection: Eye
I had little talent for happiness.Collection: Littles
Vladimir: Did I ever leave you? Estragon: You let me go.Collection: Let Me Go
To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day?Collection: Thinking
We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free benchCollection: Sunshine
If you don't know where you are currently standing, you're dead.Collection: Baseball
Mysterious affair, electricity.Collection: Science
God is a witness that cannot be sworn.Collection: Witness
The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of.Collection: Eye
So all things limp together for the only possible.Collection: Together
The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere. The essential is to go on squirming forever at the edge of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting God to plague his creature, per pro his chosen shits. I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but strech out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for eternity.Collection: Long
...you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go onCollection: Pain
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.Collection: Interesting
How long have I been here, what a question, I've often wondered. And often I could answer, An hour, a month, a year, a century, depending on what I meant by here, and me, and being, and there I never went looking for extravagant meanings, there I never much varied, only the here would sometimes seem to vary.Collection: Years
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.Collection: Laughing
The bicycle is a great good. But it can turn nasty, if ill employed.Collection: Cycling
Fail, fail again, fail better.Collection: Inspirational
All life long, the same questions, the same answers.Collection: Long
It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.Collection: Rams
The only sin is the sin of being born.Collection: Sin
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.Collection: Reality