“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
― Samuel Beckett
“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”
― Samuel Beckett
“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, Waiting for Godot
“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett
“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
― Samuel Beckett
“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”
― Samuel Beckett, Murphy
“My mistakes are my life.”
― Samuel Beckett
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame
“The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.”
― Samuel Beckett
“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! 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! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“The only sin is the sin of being born”
― Samuel Beckett
“Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy
“Normally I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.”
― Samuel Beckett
“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“There's no lack of void.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“Words are the clothes thoughts wear.”
― Samuel Beckett
“Habit is a great deadener.”
― Samuel Beckett
“If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy
“Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps.”
― Samuel Beckett
“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, Molloy
“When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy
“Let us say before I go any further, that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
“I've got my faults, but changing my tune isn't one of them.”
― Samuel Beckett
“Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.”
― Samuel Beckett