Samuel Beckett

“If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.”

“In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead.”

“Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.”

“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.”

“With a cluther of limbs and organs, all that is needed to live again, to hold out a little time, I'll call that living, I'll say it's me, I'll get standing, I'll stop thinking, I'll be too busy, getting standing, staying standing, stirring about, holding out, getting to tomorrow, tomorrow week, that will be ample, a week will be ample, a week in spring, that puts the jizz in you.”

“But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. He was eloquent. I pointed out that I was not sad. That was a mistake. Your papers, he said, I knew it a moment later. Not at all, I said, not at all. Your papers! he cried. Ah my papers.”

“There'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.”

“Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.”

“Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen.”

“Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.”

“I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. 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.”

“Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?Henry: Not a living soul.Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted.”

“To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.”

“Words are the clothes thoughts wear.”

“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.”

“I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought.”

“נסה שוב. היכשל שוב. היכשל בצורה טובה יותר”

“האמנות הייתה מאז ומתמיד בבחינת חקירה טהורה.”

“מה עשה אלוהים לפני היצירה?”

“יותר מדי קצר בשביל שיהיה כדאי להתחיל, יותר מדי ארוך בשביל לא להתחיל בכל זאת, הנה זהו הזמן שלהם, כלוב הברזל של השעות.”