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
who-i-am knowing what-matters
But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.
able dread ifs
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.
giving hmm
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves? Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
laughing stories world
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… 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.
friday monday prayer
The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.
birth futility gave-up
I gave up before birth.
success couple home
Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.
achievement parent leaving
Hardly had the glow been kindled by some good deed on your part or by some little triumph over your rivals or by a word of praisefrom your parents or mentors when it would begin to cool and fade leaving you in a very short time as chill and dim as before.
waiting why-not waiting-for-godot
Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.
thinking thoughtful should-have
it's impossible I should have a mind and I have one
two might fool
For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.
humanity philosopher poet
Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
dies
The day you die is just like any other, only shorter.
knowing soul want
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.