Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Like
Worse
Margins
Least
Flat
Words
Flats
Blacken
Business
Blank
Obliterate
Better
Holes
Speechless
Looks
Fill
Senseless
Whole
Till
Ghastly
Would
Misery
Texts

More quotes by Samuel Beckett

Image
Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it.
Samuel Beckett
Image
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
Image
Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.
Samuel Beckett
Image
Adulterers, take warning, never admit.
Samuel Beckett
Image
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
Samuel Beckett
Image
For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.
Samuel Beckett
Image
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
Image
We all are born mad. Some remain so.
Samuel Beckett
Image
We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
Samuel Beckett
Image
And what I have, what I am, is enough, was always enough for me, and as far as my dear little sweet little future is concerned I have no qualms, I have a good time coming.
Samuel Beckett
Image
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett
Image
How hideous is the semicolon.
Samuel Beckett
Image
The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.
Samuel Beckett
Image
I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.
Samuel Beckett
Image
All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.
Samuel Beckett
Image
It was the only way to progress, to stop.
Samuel Beckett
Image
The sky sinks in the morning, this fact has been insufficiently observed.
Samuel Beckett
Image
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Samuel Beckett
Image
Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.
Samuel Beckett
Image
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.
Samuel Beckett