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I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.

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
Able
Souls
Soul
Perhaps
Wells
Told
Well
Story
Time
Living
Tell
Another
Stories
Alike

More quotes by 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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Light black. From pole to pole.
Samuel Beckett
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And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept.
Samuel Beckett
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I gave up before birth.
Samuel Beckett
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There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.
Samuel Beckett
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I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.
Samuel Beckett
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What kind of country is this where a woman can't weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired bill-brokers!
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something? CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!
Samuel Beckett
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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!
Samuel Beckett
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Better hope deferred than none.
Samuel Beckett
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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.
Samuel Beckett
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Sloth is all passions the most powerful.
Samuel Beckett
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But it seems impossible to speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you always overlook something.
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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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.
Samuel Beckett
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Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.
Samuel Beckett
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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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Never but the one matter. The dead and gone. The dying and going. From the word go.
Samuel Beckett
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All has not been said and never will be.
Samuel Beckett