Samuel Beckett Quotes

Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.

Your past is not your past if it's still impacting your present.

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Sometimes it seems unfair that events so old can reach forward through the years, sinking claws into one's life and twisting all that follows it. Yet perhaps that is the ultimate justice: we are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us. There is no escaping that, not for any of us.

Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.

You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.

Your past is your shadow. It has form but no substance, except in the places you allow it to touch you. (

That parasite: the past.

The book says we may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us.

I am never free of the past. I have made it crystal clear that I believe the past is part of the present which becomes part of the future.

The past is able to close round certain moments, as if they were seeds, and deliver them again fresh and living in the present.

Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you.

The future is always here in the past

I know what it feels like to be bruised; I know what it feels like to carry things around with you that never totally heal. There's closure and then there's stuff that's kind of like, Well, I guess it's going to be in the minivan forever. And you carry it with you and you continue on your journey with your minivan full of stuff, which I think most of us do.

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom to all.

The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed?

Oh, I know all about my mother and me,' you may say. 'All that business with my mother was over years ago.' You don't and it wasn't.

Tomorrow's just your future yesterday.

'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.

The past can be a terrible weight bound to you by an unbreakable chain. You can drag it with you, forever looking over your shoulder at what holds you back. Or you can let it go and move forward. It’s your choice.

The past is the father of the present.

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.

The only bridge I've ever burned along this legacy I dance is the one that linked the cities of prosperity and chance.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

What's interesting to me, is a moving someone through time; in a way, history is part of my landscape. And it fascinates me that history can be so easily reflected in what happens today.