Samuel Beckett Quotes

Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri.

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

I am myself a fabulous fake.

We are not always even what we are most.

Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.

I surrounded myself with people who indulged my ego. They treated me as though I was Ziggy Stardust or one of my characters, never realising that David Jones might be behind it.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

You can't know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

If you begin to think you're something you're not, you're looking in the wrong mirror.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

I am a deeply superficial person.

Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn't investigated. They might find that I don't really exist - that I'm just a hologram.

We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.

The woman who made those movies, that's not me. She's someone else.

There's who you think you are and who you want to be, and then who you actually are.

Can I do an impression of me? I don't think I can. It would be the most self-confronting thing you could ever do.