Quotes from Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness. Oh? Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

There's something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.

Here's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.

Tears, that could be the tone, if they weren't so easy, the true tone and tenor at last.

Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, 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.

This place, if I could describe this place, no place around me, theres no end to me, I dont know what it is, it isnt flesh, it doesnt end, its like air

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, thats what Ive had to make the best of.

What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine, if they want me to succeed Ill fail, and vise versa, so as not to be rid of my tormentors.

How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.

What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.

At no moment do I know what Im talking about, nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why, but I could employ fifty wretches for this sinister operation and still be short of the fifty-first, to close the circuit, that I know, without knowing what it means.

I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

These things I say, and shall say, if I can, are no longer, or are not yet, or never were, or never will be, or if they were, if they are, if they will be, were not here, are not here, will not be here, but elsewhere.

In order to obtain the optimum view of what takes place in front of me, I should have to lower my eyes a little. But I lower my eyes no more. In a word, I only see what appears close beside me, what I best see I see ill.

The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.

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? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.

That passed the time. It would have passed in any case. Yes, but not so rapidly.

What about hanging ourselves? Hmm. It'd give us an erection. An erection! With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that? Let's hang ourselves immediately!

Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a way? I find this really most extraordinarily interesting.

You should have been a poet. I was (Gesture towards his rags.) Isn't that obvious?

Nothing to be done. I'm beginning to come round to that opinion.

He who has waited long enough, will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.