Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckettwas a French-Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth13 April 1906
CityFoxrock, Ireland
CountryIreland
love self-love neighbor
Lick your neighbor as yourself!
spiritual philosophical perfect
Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.
should-have giving joy
What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.
extinction next landscape
In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.
real would-be departure
If I were in the unenviable position of having to study my work my points of departure would be the "Naught is more real ..." and the "Ubi nihil vales ..." both already in Murphy and neither very rational.
art philosophy reality
Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.
art old-things littles
I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.
thinking want ass
All I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.
compromise environment habit
Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.
book writing exercise
I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.
body use window
If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.
trying failing try-again
I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.
regret long dying
No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
spring long done
I still smile it's not worth the trouble any more for a long time now it's not been worth the trouble the tongue spring goes into the mud I stay like this not thirsty any more the tongue goes back into the mouth it closes it has to make a straight line now it's done I've made the image.