Quotes from Endgame & Act Without Words

“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

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“..седнах на земята и видях сам себе си, наобиколен от гълъби, които се галят в мен, за тях аз бях живителен бог, вглеждах се назад в живота си и виждах себе си сега, заобиколен от божи пратеници, гълъби и гълъбици, сякаш бях някакъв светец, сякаш бяха избраник на небесата, и докато другите ми се смееха, чувах смях, викове и подмятания, аз бях обдарен с гълъбово послание и вярвах, че невероятното отново е станало реалност, и че дори да имах десет милиона и три хотела, това галене и тези целуващи човчици на гълъби и гълъбици, те са ми изпратени от самите небеса, които навярно са харесали нещо в мен, всичко изглеждаше така, както го бях виждал на картините по олтарите и върху изобразяващите пътя на Христос към Голгота стенописи, покрай които се прибирахме в килиите си.Аз обаче нищо не виждах и нищо не чувах, исках само да бъда това, което никога не можах да стана, милионер, и въпреки че притежавах два милиона, многократен милионер станах едва сега, когато за първи път видях, че тези гълъбици са мои приятели, че са, като в някоя притча, послание, което тепърва ме очаква...”
― Bohumil Hrabal, quote from I Served the King of England

“Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the weakness of our nature.”
― Anthony Hope, quote from The Prisoner of Zenda

“The water is DEEP AND DARK AND DANGEROUS”
― Mary Downing Hahn, quote from Deep and Dark and Dangerous (A Ghost Story)

“He is nothing more than one of my pawns. However, he is not a normal pawn. He is a pawn that can get across the whole board in one move.”
― Yana Toboso, quote from Black Butler, Vol. 1

“There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Doctor Faustus

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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.

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