Top 450 Samuel Beckett Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn’t tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That’s what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all?”

— Samuel Beckett

252. “All hangs together, I am in chains.”

— Samuel Beckett

253. “For I had no illusions, I knew that all was about to end, or to begin again, it little mattered which, and it little mattered how, I had only to wait.”

— Samuel Beckett

254. “As long as I kept walking I didn’t hear them, because of the footsteps. But as soon as I halted I heard them again, a little fainter each time, admittedly, but what does it matter, faint or loud, cry is cry, all that matters is that it should cease. For years I thought they would cease. Now I don’t think so any more. I could have done with other loves perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don’t.”

— Samuel Beckett

255. “We should have thought of it when the world was young, in the nineties.”

— Samuel Beckett

256. “We underestimate this little hole, it seems to me, we call it the arsehole and affect to despise it. But is it not rather the true portal of our being and the celebrated mouth no more than the kitchen door.”

— Samuel Beckett

257. “Yes, my resolutions were remarkable in this, that they were no sooner formed than something always happened to prevent their execution. That.”

— Samuel Beckett

258. “We are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.”

— Samuel Beckett

259. “Ah earth you old extinguisher.”

— Samuel Beckett

260. “He sometimes halted without saying anything. Either he had finally nothing to say or while having something to say he finally decided not to say it.”

— Samuel Beckett

261. “God knows I’m not intelligent otherwise I’d be dead.”

— Samuel Beckett

262. “The only thing you must never speak of is your happiness.”

— Samuel Beckett

263. “Oh not that I was ever even incompletely deaf.”

— Samuel Beckett

264. “And I am perhaps confusing several different occasions, and different times, deep down, and deep down is my dwelling, oh not deepest down, somewhere between the mud and the scum.”

— Samuel Beckett

265. “There is no great difference, says Proust, between the memory of a dream and the memory of reality.”

— Samuel Beckett

266. “Misfortunes, blessings, I have no time to pick my words, I am in a hurry to be done. And yet no, I am in no hurry.”

— Samuel Beckett

267. “And if I ever stop talking it will be because there is nothing more to be said, even though all has not been said, even though nothing has been said.”

— Samuel Beckett

268. “And I was wondering how to depart without self-loathing or sadness, or with as little as possible, when a kind of immense sigh all around me announced it was not I who was departing, but the flock.”

— Samuel Beckett

269. “I thought much about myself. That is to say I often took a quick look at myself, closed my eyes, forgot, began again.”

— Samuel Beckett

270. “But I pushed and pulled in vain, the wheels would not turn. It was as though the brakes were jammed, and heaven knows they were not, for my bicycle had no brakes. And suddenly overcome by a great weariness, in spite of the dying day when I always felt most alive, I threw the bicycle back in the bush and lay down on the ground, on the grass, careless of the dew, I never feared the dew.”

— Samuel Beckett

271. “I stopped being half-witted and became sly whenever I took the trouble.”

— Samuel Beckett

272. “And I shall resemble the wretches famed in fable, crushed beneath the weight of their wish come true. And I even feel a strange desire come over me, the desire to know what I am doing, and why. So I near the goal I set myself in my young days and which prevented me from living. And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another. Very pretty.”

— Samuel Beckett

273. “It’s not me, it’s not true, it’s not me, I’m far.”

— Samuel Beckett

274. “Personally I always preferred Lipton’s.”

— Samuel Beckett

275. “I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life.”

— Samuel Beckett

276. “You can’t have everything, I’ve often noticed it.”

— Samuel Beckett

277. “Hell itself, although eternal, dates from the revolt of Lucifer. It is therefore permissible, in the light of this distant analogy, to think of myself as being here for ever, but not as having been here for ever.”

— Samuel Beckett

278. “A mug’s game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so.”

— Samuel Beckett

279. “Yes, I know they are words, there was a time I didn’t, as I still don’t know if they are mine.”

— Samuel Beckett

280. “Boys my age with whom, in spite of everything, I was obliged to mix occasionally, mocked me.”

— Samuel Beckett

281. “With his two hands he props up his jaw. He passes without a word. Perhaps he does not see me. One of these days I’ll challenge him. I’ll say, I don’t know, I’ll say something, I’ll think of something when the time comes.”

— Samuel Beckett

282. “ESTRAGON: Let’s hang ourselves immediately!”

— Samuel Beckett

283. “Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.”

— Samuel Beckett

284. “Delicious instants, before one’s eyes get used to the dark.”

— Samuel Beckett

285. “Are you capable of following me? He did not answer. But I seized his thoughts as clearly as if he had spoken them, namely, And you, are you capable of leading me?”

— Samuel Beckett

286. “They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance. I personally would lynch them with the utmost pleasure, I don’t say I’d lend a hand, no, I am not a violent man, but I’d encourage the others and stand them drinks when it was done.”

— Samuel Beckett

287. “But it is only since I have ceased to live that I think of these things and the other things. It is in the tranquillity of decomposition that I remember the long confused emotion which was my life, and that I judge it, as it is said that God will judge me, and with no less impertinence. To decompose is to live too, I know, I know, don’t torment me, but one sometimes forgets.”

— Samuel Beckett

288. “Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.”

— Samuel Beckett

289. “And I’ll be myself at last, as a starveling belches his odourless wind, before the bliss of a coma.”

— Samuel Beckett

290. “Did they intrude on me here? No, no one has ever intruded on me here. Elsewhere then.”

— Samuel Beckett

291. “Murphy was one of the elect, who require everything to remind them of something else.”

— Samuel Beckett

292. “Oh, they weren’t notions like yours, they were notions like mine, all spasm, sweat and trembling, without an atom of common sense or lucidity. But they were the best I had.”

— Samuel Beckett

293. “If I had known who Godot is, I would have written it in the script.”

— Samuel Beckett

294. “So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric.”

— Samuel Beckett

295. “Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it’s me? Answer simply, someone answer simply.”

— Samuel Beckett

296. “Fortunately I did not need affection.”

— Samuel Beckett

297. “It will be the same silence, the same as ever, murmurous with muted lamentation, panting and exhaling of impossible sorrow, like distant laughter, and brief spells of hush, as of one buried before his time. Long or short, the same silence. Then I resurrect and begin again.”

— Samuel Beckett

298. “Whether all grow black, or all grow bright, or all remain grey, it is grey we need, to begin with, because of what it is, and of what it can do, made of bright and black, able to shed the former, or the latter, and be the latter or the former alone. But perhaps I am the prey, on the subject of grey, in the grey, to delusions.”

— Samuel Beckett

299. “What do you do when you fall far from help?”

— Samuel Beckett

300. “The very look of it made me thirsty.”

— Samuel Beckett