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.
Samuel Beckett

Birth was the death of him.
Samuel Beckett

Do we mean love, when we say love?
Samuel Beckett

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.
Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

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

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
Samuel Beckett

Habit is a great deadener.
Samuel Beckett

I can't go on. I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett

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


I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
Samuel Beckett

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.
Samuel Beckett

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.
Samuel Beckett

If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love.
Samuel Beckett

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.
Samuel Beckett

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.
Samuel Beckett

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.
Samuel Beckett

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.
Samuel Beckett

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.
Samuel Beckett

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
Samuel Beckett