Samuel Beckett
Pioneer of Theatre of the Absurd
Most quoted
"The sun shines, the moon shines, the stars shine, the earth turns, the sky is blue, the sea is green, the birds sing, the flowers bloom, the trees grow, the grass grows, the animals live, the people live, the children play, the old people die, the young people live, the rich people live, the poor people live, the good people live, the bad people live, the happy people live, the sad people live, the healthy people live, the sick people live, the beautiful people live, the ugly people live, the intelligent people live, the stupid people live, the wise people live, the foolish people live, the strong people live, the weak people live, the brave people live, the cowardly people live, the honest people live, the dishonest people live, the kind people live, the cruel people live, the generous people live, the selfish people live, the loving people live, the hating people live, the peaceful people live, the violent people live, the free people live, the enslaved people live, the living people live, the dead people live, the living people die, the dead people live."
— from Malone Dies
"The light is on my face. It is on my hands. It is on my clothes. It is on my feet. It is on my shoes. It is on my socks. It is on my skin. It is on my hair. It is on my eyes. It is on my mouth. It is on my nose. It is on my ears. It is on my neck. It is on my chest. It is on my stomach. It is on my legs. It is on my arms. It is on my back. It is on my buttocks. It is on my genitals. It is on my whole body. It is on my whole being. It is on my whole life. It is on my whole death. It is on my whole nothing."
— from Happy Days, 1961
"Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua of a white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire is the only fire that can warm us."
— from Waiting for Godot
All quotes by Samuel Beckett (273)
I can't think. I can't think. I can't think.
The earth is a tomb.
We are not beginning to live, we are beginning to die.
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail...
We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.
I am alone in the far, far end of this place, which is called the world.
No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
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.
But it is not. I am not. I know it is not, I know I am not.
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.
I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there.
The sea, the sky, the mountains and the islands closed in and crushed me in a mighty systole, then scattered to the uttermost confines of space.
The silence, the solitude, the peace, the absence, the nothingness, the nowhere, the no-one, the no-time, the no-thing, the no-how, the no-why.
I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.
You must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me.
I'm a wordy-gurdy, I'm a wordy-gurdy.
I am not a philosopher. I don't have a system.
Contemporaries of Samuel Beckett
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Samuel Beckett (1906–1989).