Quote

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

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James Joyce: His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.
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There is at least this to be said for mind, that it can dispel mind.
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Enough to know no knowing.
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The only sin is the sin of being born.
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I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.
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I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.
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Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.
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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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James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.
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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!
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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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Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
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Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and thatto compress it further can only make it more obscure?
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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.
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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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The bicycle is a great good. But it can turn nasty, if ill employed.
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Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.
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All has not been said and never will be.
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To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.
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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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