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Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede.

Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Beckett
Age: 83 †
Born: 1906
Born: April 13
Died: 1989
Died: December 22
Artist
Author
Cricketer
Film Director
French Resistance Fighter
Intellectual
Linguist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Teacher
Dublin city
Samuel Barclay Beckett
Andrew Belis
Sam Beckett
Sa-miao-erh Pei-kʻo-tʻe
Samuel Beḳeṭ
Holding
Held
Hold
Hand
Plod
Hands
Recede
Never
Pause
Pauses
Slowly

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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.
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No painting is more replete than Mondrian's.
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No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
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Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.
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The human eyelid is not teartight (happily for the human eye).
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The short winter’s day was drawing to a close. It seems to me sometimes that these are the only days I have ever known, and especially that most charming moment of all, just before night wipes them out.
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Enough to know no knowing.
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Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
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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.
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Dying for dark — and the darker the Worse. Strange.
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But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.
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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!
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Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic.
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The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.
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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.
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The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.
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Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains.
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Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.
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I can't go on. I'll go on.
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Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle.
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