Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckettwas a French-Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth13 April 1906
CityFoxrock, Ireland
CountryIreland
generous thieves
For why be discouraged, one of thieves was saved, that is a generous percentage.
remain
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
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
suffering artistic conditions
Suffering is the main condition of the artistic experience.
writing want ends
I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.
bible athlete writing
I've tried not to exaggerate the glory of athletes. I'd rather, if I could, preserve a sense of proportion, to write about them asexcellent ballplayers, first-rate players. But I'm sure I have contributed to false values--as Stanley Woodward said, "Godding up those ballplayers." The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
knowledge knowing pessimism
Enough to know no knowing.
play
I cannot explain my plays. Each must find out for himself what is meant
fall night darkness
You cried for night - it falls. Now cry in darkness.
hideous
How hideous is the semicolon.
self literature waste
I have nothing but wastes and wilds of self-translation before me for many miserable months to come.
responsibility people criticism
My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.
literature form bother
You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one without almost without bothering to read the other.
stupid book writing
I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them. *1937