Quotes from Endgame & Act Without Words

Samuel Beckett ·  96 pages

Rating: (8.4K votes)


“CLOV:
Do you believe in the life to come?
HAMM:
Mine was always that.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words


“HAMM
Open the window.
CLOV
What for?
HAMM
I want to hear the sea.
CLOV
You wouldn't hear it.
HAMM Even if you opened the window?
CLOV
No.
HAMM
Then it's not worth opening it?
CLOV
No.
HAMM(violently)
Then open it!”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words


“You weep, and weep, for nothing, so as not to laugh, and little by little . . . you begin to grieve.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words


“CLOV [sadly] No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words


“There’s something dripping in my head. [Pause.] A heart, a heart in my head.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words



“One day you’ll say to yourself, I’m tired, I’ll sit down, and you’ll go and sit down. Then you’ll say, I’m hungry, I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up. You’ll say, I shouldn’t have sat down, but since I have I’ll sit on a little longer, then I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up and you won’t get anything to eat. [Pause.] You’ll look at the wall a while, then you’ll say, I’ll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I’ll feel better, and you’ll close them. And when you open them again there’ll be no wall any more. [Pause.] Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn’t fill it, and there you’ll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe. [Pause.]”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words


“I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words


About the author

Samuel Beckett
Born place: in Foxrock (Dublin), Ireland
Born date April 13, 1906
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“He’s sad, and sometimes sad comes out as mad.” “Hmm.”
― Emily Bleeker, quote from When I'm Gone


“After World War I, dozens of Negro soldiers had been lynched in the South, some of them still wearing their uniforms, and in the summer of 1946 the lynchings of black veterans resumed with a vengeance.”
― Gilbert King, quote from Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America


“I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde


“It’s a grace feather. See how its colors shift from green to blue, like the sea? It means remembrance. It shows that no distance, no amount of water between two people, will make them forget. Someone gave it to say that they remembered you.”
― Kirsty Logan, quote from The Gracekeepers


“Several RainWings stood by the water, in shades of blue and purple, holding NightWing spears.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from The Brightest Night


Interesting books

Broken
(10.1K)
Broken
by Lauren Layne
Presumed Guilty
(4.4K)
Presumed Guilty
by Tess Gerritsen
Great Pleasures
(20)
Great Pleasures
by Edward Southgate
Deceptions
(6.7K)
Deceptions
by Kelley Armstrong
Now and at the Hour of Our Death
(44)
Now and at the Hour...
by J.S.B. Morse
Shadows of the Workhouse
(15.4K)
Shadows of the Workh...
by Jennifer Worth

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.