Samuel Beckett Quotes

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

As an adult, I have often been deep in serious conversation with someone I've highly respected and seen them roll an eye as my mouth has mangled yet another magnificently conceived, clumsily articulated sentence. In my mind, the words are mellifluous as honey. In my mouth, they are shards of glass.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

I have a hard time arguing with stupid people.

First rule, stick them with the pointy end!

The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?

In the end everything will be okay. But hurdles have to be jumped through first.

First sign of madness, talking to your own head.

Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road.

The First Aphorism of Religion Cases: Only the religious convictions of other people are weird. Yours are perfectly rational.

Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another's words.

What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

In the end, the only thing between us was silence.

But why would it matter? We aren't ... or...uh...weren't ..." Which is it, Jess? "Aren't" or "weren't"? Present or past tense? Now or then? "We haven't been talking to each other." Past imperfect tense. How appropriate.

They that never peeped beyond the common belief in which their easy understandings were at first indoctrinated are strongly assured of the truth of their receptions.

I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.

It was fine and good to be defiant to the end, but it was better not to get caught in the first place.

And so it was when anyone tried to speak: their minds would become tangled in remembrance. Words became floods of thought with no beginning or end, and would drown the speaker before he could reach the life raft of the point he was trying to make. It was impossible to remember what one meant, what, after all of the words, was intended.

Treachery, though at first very cautious, in the end betrays itself.

The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.

Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding.

A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?

and for the first time in my life I understand the end of that poem. And I never wanted to. You have to believe me.

If I say to you I don't have an open marriage...and you don't trust that, well, there's nothing that I really have to say to anybody about anything because at the end of the day, I'm living my life and I'm happy.

Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP