Samuel Beckett quotes

Samuel Beckett was an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, renowned for his profound contributions to modernist literature and theatre. His most famous work, "Waiting for Godot," became a defining piece of absurdist theatre. He explored themes of existentialism, isolation, and the human condition through his distinctive minimalist style. Here are 188 of his quotes:

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.

Samuel Beckett

Each word seemed to me an unnecessary stain on silence of nothingness.

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

The only sin is the sin of being born.

Samuel Beckett

Krapp: 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.

Samuel Beckett

I don't like animals. It's a strange thing, I don't like men and I don't like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.

Samuel Beckett

Birth was the death of him.

Samuel Beckett

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.

Samuel Beckett

The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

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

Samuel Beckett

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Samuel Beckett

Yes, I don't know why, but I have never been disappointed, and I often was in the early days, without feeling at the same time, or a moment later, an undeniable relief.

Samuel Beckett

I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.

Samuel Beckett

Hamm: Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!

Samuel Beckett

Don't wait to be hunted to hide, that's always been my motto.

Samuel Beckett