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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.

Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Beckett
Age: 83 †
Born: 1906
Born: April 13
Died: 1989
Died: December 22
Artist
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Film Director
French Resistance Fighter
Intellectual
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Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Teacher
Dublin city
Samuel Barclay Beckett
Andrew Belis
Sam Beckett
Sa-miao-erh Pei-kʻo-tʻe
Samuel Beḳeṭ
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More quotes by Samuel Beckett

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If you don't know where you are currently standing, you're dead.
Samuel Beckett
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My keepers, why keepers, I'm in no danger of stirring an inch, ah I see, it's to make me think I'm a prisoner, frantic with corporeality, rearing to get out and away.
Samuel Beckett
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Dying for dark — and the darker the Worse. Strange.
Samuel Beckett
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What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
Samuel Beckett
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My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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I want very much to be back in the caul, on my back in the dark forever.
Samuel Beckett
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Hardly had the glow been kindled by some good deed on your part or by some little triumph over your rivals or by a word of praisefrom your parents or mentors when it would begin to cool and fade leaving you in a very short time as chill and dim as before.
Samuel Beckett
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The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.
Samuel Beckett
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I say me, knowing all the while it's not me.
Samuel Beckett
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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!
Samuel Beckett
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I can't go on. I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett
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What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.
Samuel Beckett
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Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.
Samuel Beckett
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Words fail, there are times when even they fail.
Samuel Beckett
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It's a lot to ask of one creature, it's a lot to ask, that he should first behave as if he were not, then as if he were, before being admitted to that peace where he neither is, nor is not, and where the language dies that permits of such expressions.
Samuel Beckett
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There is this to be said for Dachsunds of such length and lowness as Nelly, that it makes very little difference to their appearance whether they stand, sit or lie.
Samuel Beckett
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Deplorable mania, when something happens, to inquire what.
Samuel Beckett