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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.
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
Even
Composition
Thing
Hardly
Mind
Heat
Never
Saying
Think
Stop
Thinking
Keep
Able
Ever
More quotes by Samuel Beckett
There is at least this to be said for mind, that it can dispel mind.
Samuel Beckett
Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all that is over, no, for the being over, words have been my only loves, not many.
Samuel Beckett
But it seems impossible to speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you always overlook something.
Samuel Beckett
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
You would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.
Samuel Beckett
Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.
Samuel Beckett
Nothing is more real than nothing.
Samuel Beckett
Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.
Samuel Beckett
An imaginative adventure does not enjoy the same corsets as reportage.
Samuel Beckett
Yes, light, there is no other word for it.
Samuel Beckett
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.
Samuel Beckett
God is a witness that cannot be sworn.
Samuel Beckett
The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.
Samuel Beckett
Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
Samuel Beckett
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
Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.
Samuel Beckett
Where am I, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett
We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
Samuel Beckett
We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.
Samuel Beckett
[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.
Samuel Beckett