“Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“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, quote from Molloy
“Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“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. ”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from 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, quote from Molloy
“For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“I am still alive then. That may come in useful.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“What was God doing with himself before the creation?”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“كان يجب أن أقول ذلك منذ زمن ،إني أكتب عن ذاتي بالقلم نفسه وفي الكراسة عينها، ولكن لم أعد أنا فأنا شخص آخر بدأ للتو حياته !”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“And what I have, what I am, is enough, was always enough for me, and as far as my dear little sweet little future is concerned I have no qualms, I have a good time coming.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“But in the end I understood this language. I understood it, I understand it, all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters. It told me to write the report. Does this mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know. I shall learn. 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.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“Sometimes I went and looked at my grave. The stone was up already. It was a simple Latin cross, white. I wanted to have my name put on it, with the here lies and the date of my birth. Then all it would have wanted was the date of my death. They would not let me. Sometimes I smiled, as if I were dead already.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“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, quote from Molloy
“And in winter, under my greatcoat, I wrapped myself in swathes of newspaper, and did not shed them until the earth awoke, for good, in April. The Times Literary Supplement was admirably adapted to this purpose, of a neverfailing toughness and impermeability. Even farts made no impression on it. I can't help it, gas escapes from my fundament on the least pretext, it's hard not to mention it now and then, however great my distaste. One day I counted them. Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an hour. After all it's not excessive. Four farts every fifteen minutes. It's nothing. Not even one fart every four minutes. It's unbelievable. Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never have mentioned it.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think…Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. 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. To hell with it anyway.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“For I shall be far away, before these lines are read, in a place where no one will dream of coming to look for me.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“I stopped being half-witted and became sly whenever I took the trouble.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“But it is useless to dwell on this period of my life. If I go on long enough calling that my life I'll end up by believing it.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as much as possible. For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“Constipation is a sign of good health in pomeranians.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone. There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got there thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages,so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work any more. That doesn't matter apparently. What I'd like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my good-byes, finish dying. They don't want that. Yes, there is more than one, apparently. But it's always the same one that comes. You'll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is I haven't much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week's. They are marked with signs I don't understand ... Here's my beginning. It must mean something, or they wouldn't keep it. Here it is.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that, and I'm not sure of it.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“There I am then back in the saddle, in my numbed heart a prick of misgiving, like one dying of cancer obliged to consult his dentist.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
Samuel Beckett
Born place: in Foxrock (Dublin), Ireland
Born date April 13, 1906
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“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from Il libro dell'inquietudine di Bernardo Soares
“and soon the cat was in the toilet.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The Last Ever After
“You can't be too careful about work. It's the most dangerous habit known to medical science.”
― Eugene O'Neill, quote from The Iceman Cometh
“Il est bon de savoir quelque chose des moeurs de divers peuples, afin de juger des notres plus sainement et que nous ne pensions pas que tout ce qui est contre nos modes soit ridicule et contre raison, ainsi qu'ont coutume de faire ceux qui n'ont rien vu; mais lorsqu'on emploie trop de temps à voyager on devient enfin étranger en son pays; et lorsqu'on est trop curieux des choses qui se pratiquaient aux siècles passés, on demeure ordinairement fort ignorant de celles qui se pratiquent en celui-ci.”
― René Descartes, quote from Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
“Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Dosadi Experiment
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