Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 2

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.

Fail, fail again, fail better.

If I was dead, I wouldn't know I was dead. That's the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

People are bloody ignorant apes.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

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.

That double-headed monster of damnation and salvation--Time.

My mistakes are my life.

Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic.

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

That's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.

All life long, the same questions, the same answers.

Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.

What are we doing here, that is the question.

For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.

With all this darkness round me I feel less alone.

But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

What do we do now, now that we are happy?

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

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.

The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust

Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.