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To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

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
Changed
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Always

More quotes by 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.
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We should have thought of it when the world was young, in the nineties.
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Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.
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I had seen faces in photographs I might have found beautiful had I known even vaguely in what beauty was supposed to consist. And my father's face, on his death-bolster, had seemed to hint at some form of aesthetics relevant to man. But the faces of the living, all grimace and flush, can they be described as objects?
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Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett
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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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[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
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Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.
Samuel Beckett
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James Joyce: His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.
Samuel Beckett
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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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And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity. I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric.
Samuel Beckett
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In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.
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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They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance.
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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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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Never but the one matter. The dead and gone. The dying and going. From the word go.
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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Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one.
Samuel Beckett
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Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.
Samuel Beckett