Quotations From SAMUEL BECKETT

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• 1.

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

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. Belacqua, in Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written 1932, published 1992).
• 2.

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

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. Quoted in Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, a Biography, ch. 21 (1978). Conversation with John Driver, 1961.
• 3.

  I want very much to be back in the caul, on my back in the dark forever.

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1934. Belacqua, in More Pricks than Kicks, p. 29, Grove Press (1970).
  
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• 4.

  To be together again, after so long, who love the sunny wind, the windy sun, in the sun, in the wind, that is perhaps something, perhaps something.

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1953. Sam, in Watt, p. 163, Grove Press (1959).
  
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• 5.

  This is going to be a happy day. Another happy day.

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. Winnie, in Happy Days, p. 23, Grove Press (1961).
  
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• 6.

  Birth was the death of him.

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. Speaker, in "A Piece of Monologue," one of the dramatic pieces in The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett, p. 265, Grove Press (1984).
  
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• 7.

  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.

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. "Beckett's Letters on Endgame," p. 185, The Village Voice Reader, Doubleday (1962). From a letter to Alan Schneider dated April 30, 1957.
  
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• 8.

  All that is active, all that is enveloped in time and space, is endowed with what might be described as an abstract, ideal and absolute impermeability.

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1931. Proust, p. 41, Grove Press (1957).
  
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• 9.

  Have at last written another [play, i.e., Endgame].... Rather difficult and elliptic, mostly depending on the power of the text to claw, more inhuman than "Godot."

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. "Beckett's Letters on Endgame," p. 183, The Village Voice Reader, Doubleday (1962). From a letter to Alan Schneider dated June 21, 1956.
  
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• 10.

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

  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1931. Proust, p. 8, Grove Press (1957).
  
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