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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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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
Known
Symptoms
Eased
Desire
Quantum
Leeches
Another
Closed
Diffuse
Cannot
Admit
Syndromes
Made
Worse
Syndrome
Every
Horse
Symptom
Life
Daughter
Vary
System
Pessimism
Leech

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It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger.
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There's something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.
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We all are born mad. Some remain so.
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No painting is more replete than Mondrian's.
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Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.
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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!
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Better hope deferred than none.
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The reality of the individualis an incoherent reality and must be expressed incoherently.
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In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg. Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?
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But it seems impossible to speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you always overlook something.
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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.
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It is better to adopt the simplest explanation, even if it is not simple, even if it does not explain very much. A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns.
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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.
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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.
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I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.
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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.
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Words fail, there are times when even they fail.
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Birth was the death of him.
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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.
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In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.
Samuel Beckett