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
writing want ends
I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.
bible athlete writing
I've tried not to exaggerate the glory of athletes. I'd rather, if I could, preserve a sense of proportion, to write about them asexcellent ballplayers, first-rate players. But I'm sure I have contributed to false values--as Stanley Woodward said, "Godding up those ballplayers." The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
stupid book writing
I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them. *1937
writing letters life-is
My dear Tom, Delighted to get your letter. Do write again. This life is terrible and I don't understand how it can be endured.
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.
memories lying writing
I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.
writing joyce
James Joyce: His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.
writing two waste
There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.
writing silence matter
Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.
generous thieves
For why be discouraged, one of thieves was saved, that is a generous percentage.
remain
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
silence
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on
suffering artistic conditions
Suffering is the main condition of the artistic experience.
reality self
The reality of the individualis an incoherent reality and must be expressed incoherently.