Samuel Beckett Quotes

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment.

It is not every day that we are needed.

I was born to be alone, and I always shall be; but now I want to be.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

I don’t know if what we do is right or wrong. But I think it is right.

It is right to be alone. It is right to die alone.

What is terrible is not death, but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death.

When you’re in the shit up to your neck, there’s nothing left to do but sing.

We are all born mad. Some of us remain so.

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of laughter.

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.

Why are we here, that is the question? And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come –

I am glad to have lost you, I am glad to have loved you, I am sorry to have burdened you with my need, I am sorry to have ruined you on that spit of sand you call your island.

I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t sit in a room with the lights on.

It is the colour of the sèvres bowls in which you float white flowers, black open-mouthed, towards the interminable lines of iron tables and the endless marshes.

You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now.

Words are all we have.

Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.

This is a horrible country. I would leave at once.

You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.

Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

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.

My birth was a bit of a blunder, and so was my life.

You must be kinder to me. It is getting so lonely.

But the beauty is in the walking — we are betrayed by destinations.

You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

I have tried to get a clear view of myself, try as I might, it’s only fog and more fog.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

Esse est percipi.

Birth was the death of him.

To detach yourself elegantly from the world is not suspicious. But to reattach yourself, sharply, fatally, to it, not from inclination, or even from habit — but from despair: that is suspicious.

We make ourselves a place apart, behind light words that tease and flout, but oh, the agitated heart till someone find us really out.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Look at the sky. It is no longer empty.

What she wanted was some kind of war, a goddamn war, so long as it wiped out the job.

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.

You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.