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But What Matter Whether I Was Born Or Not, Have Lived Or Not, Am Dead Or Merely Dying. I Shall Go On Doing As I Have Always Done, Not Knowing What It Is I Do, Nor Who I Am, Nor Where I Am, Nor If I Am.

-Samuel Beckett

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But What Matter Whether

Samuel Beckett

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But What Matter Whether I Was Born Or Not, Have Lived Or Not, Am Dead Or Merely Dying. I Shall Go On Doing As I Have Always Done, Not Knowing What It Is I Do, Nor Who I Am, Nor Where I Am, Nor If I Am.

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More From Samuel Beckett

And All These Questions I Ask Myself. It Is Not In A Spirit Of Curiosity. I Cannot Be Silent. About Myself I Need Know Nothing. Here All Is Clear. No, All Is Not Clear. But The Discourse Must Go On. So One Invents Obscurities. Rhetoric.

Personally Of Course I Regret Everything. Not A Word, Not A Deed, Not A Thought, Not A Need, Not A Grief, Not A Joy, Not A Girl, Not A Boy, Not A Doubt, Not A Trust, Not A Scorn, Not A Lust, Not A Hope, Not A Fear, Not A Smile, Not A Tear, Not A Name, Not A Face, No Time, No Place...that I Do Not Regret, Exceedingly. An Ordure, From Beginning To End.

Success And Failure On The Public Level Never Mattered Much To Me, In Fact I Feel More At Home With The Latter, Having Breathed Deep Of Its Vivifying Air All My Writing Life Up To The Last Couple Of Years.

Memories Are Killing. So You Must Not Think Of Certain Things, Of Those That Are Dear To You, Or Rather You Must Think Of Them, For If You Don’t There Is The Danger Of Finding Them, In Your Mind, Little By Little.

Birth Was The Death Of Him.

Estragon: Suppose We Repented. Vladimir: Repented What? Estragon: Oh...(he Reflects.) We Wouldn’t Have To Go Into The Details. Vladimir: Our Being Born?

How All Becomes Clear And Simple When One Opens An Eye On The Within, Having Of Course Previously Exposed It To The Without, In Order To Benefit By The Contrast.

Just Under The Surface I Shall Be, All Together At First, Then Separate And Drift, Through All The Earth And Perhaps In The End Through A Cliff Into The Sea, Something Of Me. A Ton Of Worms In An Acre, That Is A Wonderful Thought, A Ton Of Worms, I Believe It.

Make Sense Who May. I Switch Off.

I Try. I Fail. I Try Again. I Fail Better.

You Cried For Night - It Falls. Now Cry In Darkness.

I Pause To Record That I Feel In Extraordinary Form. Delirium Perhaps.

All I Know Is What The Words Know, And Dead Things, And That Makes A Handsome Little Sum, With A Beginning And A Middle And An End, As In The Well-built Phrase And The Long Sonata Of The Dead.

I Shall State Silences More Competently Than Ever A Better Man Spangled The Butterflies Of Vertigo.

Any Fool Can Turn A Blind Eye But Who Knows What The Ostrich Sees In The Sand.

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.

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.

What Is This Love That More Than All The Cursed Deadly Or Any Other Of Its Great Movers So Moves The Soul And Soul What Is This Soul That More Than By Any Of Its Great Movers Is By Love So Moved?

Pozzo: I Am Blind. (silence.) Estragon: Perhaps He Can See Into The Future.

I Could Not Have Gone Through The Awful Wretched Mess Of Life Without Having Left A Stain Upon The Silence.

Vladimir: I Don't Understand. Estragon: Use Your Intelligence, Can't You? Vladimir Uses His Intelligence. Vladimir: (finally) I Remain In The Dark.

The Short Winter’s Day Was Drawing To A Close. It Seems To Me Sometimes That These Are The Only Days I Have Ever Known, And Especially That Most Charming Moment Of All, Just Before Night Wipes Them Out.

The Only Sin Is The Sin Of Being Born.

She Felt, As She Felt So Often With Murphy, Spattered With Words That Went Dead As Soon As They Sounded; Each Word Obliterated, Before It Had Time To Make Sense, By The Word That Came Next; So That In The End She Did Not Know What Had Been Said. It Was Like Difficult Music Heard For The First Time.

To Restore Silence Is The Role Of Objects.

Let's Go." "we Can't." "why Not?" "we're Waiting For Godot.

Waiting For Godot

People Are Bloody Ignorant Apes.

To Every Man His Little Cross. Till He Dies. And Is Forgotten.

Waiting For Godot

It Was Long Since I Had Longed For Anything And The Effect On Me Was Horrible.

I Love Order. It's My Dream. A World Where All Would Be Silent And Still, And Each Thing In Its Last Place, Under The Last Dust.

It Sometimes Happens And Will Sometimes Happen Again That I Forget Who I Am And Strut Before My Eyes, Like A Stranger.

It Is Right That He Too Should Have His Little Chronicle, His Memories, His Reason, And Be Able To Recognize The Good In The Bad, The Bad In The Worst, And So Grow Gently Old Down All The Unchanging Days, And Die One Day Like Any Other Day, Only Shorter.

Spend The Years Of Learning Squandering Courage For The Years Of Wandering Through A World Politely Turning From The Loutishness Of Learning.

The Tears Stream Down My Cheeks From My Unblinking Eyes. What Makes Me Weep So? There Is Nothing Saddening Here. Perhaps It Is Liquefied Brain.

To Think, When One Is No Longer Young, When One Is Not Yet Old, That One Is No Longer Young, That One Is Not Yet Old, That Is Perhaps Something.

Nothing Is Funnier Than Unhappiness, I Grant You That… Yes, Yes, It's The Most Comical Thing In The World. And We Laugh, We Laugh, With A Will, In The Beginning. But It's Always The Same Thing. Yes, It's Like The Funny Story We Have Heard Too Often, We Still Find It Funny, But We Don't Laugh Any More.

Absolute Virtue Is As Sure To Kill A Man As Absolute Vice Is, Let Alone The Dullness Of It And The Pomposities Of It.

No Painting Is More Replete Than Mondrian's.

The Reality Of The Individualis An Incoherent Reality And Must Be Expressed Incoherently.

The Search For The Means To Put An End To Things, An End To Speech, Is What Enables The Discourse To Continue.

Already All Confusion. Things And Imaginings. As Of Always. Confusion Amounting To Nothing. Despite Precautions. If Only She Could Be Pure Figment. Unalloyed. This Old So Dying Woman. So Dead. In The Madhouse Of The Skull And Nowhere Else. Where No More Precautions To Be Taken. No Precautions Possible. Cooped Up There With The Rest. Hovel And Stones. The Lot. And The Eye. How Simple All Then. If Only All Could Be Pure Figment. Neither Be Nor Been Nor By Any Shift To Be. Gently Gently. On. Careful.

Be Again, Be Again. (pause.) All That Old Misery. (pause.) Once Wasn't Enough For You.

What Goes By The Name Of Love Is Banishment, With Now And Then A Postcard From The Homeland, Such Is My Considered Opinion, This Evening.

Against The Charitable Gesture There Is No Defence.

I Did Not Want To Write, But I Had To Resign Myself To It In The End.

Have You Not Done Tormenting Me With Your Accursed Time! It's Abominable! When! When! One Day, Is That Not Enough For You, One Day He Went Dumb, One Day I Went Blind, One Day We'll Go Deaf, One Day We Were Born, One Day We Shall Die, The Same Day, The Same Second, Is That Not Enough For You? They Give Birth Astride Of A Grave, The Light Gleams An Instant, Then It's Night Once More.

Vladimir: Did I Ever Leave You? Estragon: You Let Me Go.

We Are All Born Crazy. Some Remain That Way.

I Tried To Groan, Help! Help! But The Tone That Came Out Was That Of Polite Conversation.

Asking For Help

The Essential Doesn't Change.

God Is A Witness That Cannot Be Sworn.

The End Is In The Beginning And Yet You Go On.

Dear Incomprehension, It's Thanks To You I'll Be Myself, In The End.

Habit Is A Compromise Effected Between The Individual And His Environment, Or Between The Individual And His Own Organic Eccentricities, The Guarantee Of A Dull Inviolability, The Lightning-conductor Of His Existence.

And What I Have, What I Am, Is Enough, Was Always Enough For Me, And As Far As My Dear Little Sweet Little Future Is Concerned I Have No Qualms, I Have A Good Time Coming.

We Wait. We Are Bored. (he Throws Up His Hand.) No, Don't Protest, We Are Bored To Death, There's No Denying It. Good. A Diversion Comes Along And What Do We Do? We Let It Go To Waste. Come, Let's Get To Work! (he Advances Towards The Heap, Stops In His Stride.) In An Instant All Will Vanish And We'll Be Alone More, In The Midst Of Nothingness!

No, I Regret Nothing, All I Regret Is Having Been Born, Dying Is Such A Long Tiresome Business I Always Found.

What Do I Know Of Man's Destiny? I Could Tell You More About Radishes.

There's Something Dripping In My Head. A Heart, A Heart In My Head.

Women Are All The Bloody Sameyou Can't Love For Five Minutes Without Wanting It Abolished In Brats And House Bloody Wifery.

I Open The Door Of The Cell And Go. I Am So Bowed I Only See My Feet, If I Open My Eyes, And Between My Legs A Little Trail Of Black Dust. I Say To Myself That The Earth Is Extinguished, Though I Never Saw It Lit.

For To Know Nothing Is Nothing, Not To Want To Know Anything Likewise, But To Be Beyond Knowing Anything, To Know You Are Beyond Knowing Anything, That Is When Peace Enters In, To The Soul Of The Incurious Seeker.

My Characters Have Nothing. I'm Working With Impotence, Ignorance... That Whole Zone Of Being That Has Always Been Set Aside By Artists As Something Unusable - Something By Definition Incompatible With Art.

The Tuesday Scowls, The Wednesday Growls, The Thursday Curses, The Friday Howls, The Saturday Snores, The Sunday Yawns, The Monday Morns, The Monday Morns. The Whacks, The Moans, The Cracks, The Groans, The Welts, The Squeaks, The Belts, The Shrieks, The Pricks, The Prayers, The Kicks, The Tears, The Skelps, And The Yelps.

I Asked Her To Look At Me And After A Few Moments - (pause) - After A Few Moments She Did, But The Eyes Just Slits, Because Of The Glare I Bent Over Her To Get Them In The Shadow And They Opened. (pause. Low) Let Me In.

Poets Are The Sense, Philosophers The Intelligence Of Humanity.

Habit Is The Ballast That Chains The Dog To His Vomit.

The Fact Would Seem To Be, If In My Situation One May Speak Of Facts, Not Only That I Shall Have To Speak Of Things Of Which I Cannot Speak, But Also, Which Is Even More Interesting, But Also That I, Which Is If Possible Even More Interesting, That I Shall Have To, I Forget, No Matter. And At The Same Time I Am Obliged To Speak. I Shall Never Be Silent. Never.

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.

We Lose Our Hair, Our Teeth! Our Bloom, Our Ideals.

Nothing Matters But The Writing. There Has Been Nothing Else Worthwhile... A Stain Upon The Silence.

The End Of A Life Is Always Vivifying.

All I Want To Do Is Sit On My Ass And Fart And Think Of Dante.

Tears And Laughter, They Are So Much Gaelic To Me.

Was I Asleep? Had I Slept?

The Tears Of The World Are A Constant Quantity. For Each One Who Begins To Weep, Somewhere Else Another Stops. The Same Is True Of The Laugh.

God Is Love. Yes Or No? No.

Reality, Whether Approached Imaginatively Or Empirically, Remains A Surface, Hermetic.

The Blind Have No Notion Of Time. The Things Of Time Are Hidden From Them Too.

How Do You Manage It, She Said, At Your Age? I Told Her I'd Been Saving Up For Her All My Life.

But At This Place, At This Moment Of Time, All Mankind Is Us, Whether We Like It Or Not. Let Us Make The Most Of It, Before It Is Too Late!

Waiting For Godot

All I Say Cancels Out, I’ll Have Said Nothing.

Decidedly It Will Never Have Been Given To Me To Finish Anything, Except Perhaps Breathing. One Must Not Be Greedy.

To Have Been Always What I Am - And So Changed From What I Was.

Enough. Sudden Enough. Sudden All Far. No Move And Sudden All Far. All Least. Three Pins. One Pinhole. In Dimmost Dim. Vasts Apart. At Bounds Of Boundless Void. Whence No Farther. Best Worse No Farther. Nohow Less. Nohow Worse. Nohow Naught. Nohow On.

The Whisky Bears A Grudge Against The Decanter.

I Know Those Little Phrases That Seem So Innocuous, And, Once You Let Them In, Pollute The Whole Of Speech. 'nothing Is More Real Than Nothing.' They Rise Up Out Of The Pit And Know No Rest Until They Drag You Down Into Its Dark.

How Time Flies When One Has Fun!

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.

The Sun Shone, Having No Alternative, On The Nothing New.

Estragon: What About Hanging Ourselves? Vladimir: Hmm. It'd Give Us An Erection.

Yes, I Dont Know Why, But I Have Never Been Disappointed, And I Often Was In The Early Days, Without Feeling At The Same Time, Or A Moment Later, An Undeniable Relief.

With All This Darkness Round Me I Feel Less Alone.

Over, Over, There Is A Soft Place In My Heart For All That Is Over, No, For The Being Over, Words Have Been My Only Loves, Not Many.

Words Fail, There Are Times When Even They Fail.

Words Are All We Have.

Never But The One Matter. The Dead And Gone. The Dying And Going. From The Word Go.

All This Business Of A Labour To Accomplish, Before I Can End, Of Words To Say, A Truth To Recover, In Order To Say It, Before I Can End, Of An Imposed Task, Once Known, Long Neglected, Finally Forgotten, To Perform, Before I Can Be Done With Speaking, Done With Listening, I Invented It All, In The Hope It Would Console Me, Help Me To Go On, Allow Me To Think Of Myself As Somewhere On A Road, Moving, Between A Beginning And An End, Gaining Ground, Losing Ground, Getting Lost, But Somehow In The Long Run Making Headway.

I Don't Know Why I Told This Story. I Could Just As Well Have Told Another. Perhaps Some Other Time I'll Be Able To Tell Another. Living Souls, You Will See How Alike They Are.

For The Only Way One Can Speak Of Nothing Is To Speak Of It As Though It Were Something, Just As The Only Way One Can Speak Of God Is To Speak Of Him As Though He Were A Man, Which To Be Sure He Was, In A Sense, For A Time, And As The Only Way One Can Speak Of Man, Even Our Anthropologists Have Realized That, Is To Speak Of Him As Though He Were A Termite.

If There Is One Question I Dread, To Which I Have Never Been Able To Invent A Satisfactory Reply, It Is The Question What Am I Doing.

It's So Nice To Know Where You're Going, In The Early Stages. It Almost Rids You Of The Wish To Go There.

And Truly It Little Matters What I Say, This Or That Or Any Other Thing. Saying Is Inventing. Wrong, Very Rightly Wrong. You Invent Nothing, You Think You Are Inventing, You Think You Are Escaping, And All You Do Is Stammer Out Your Lesson, The Remnants Of A Pensum One Day Got By Heart And Long Forgotten, Life Without Tears, As It Is Wept.

What Are We Doing Here, That Is The Question. And We Are Blessed In This, That We Happen To Know The Answer. Yes, In The Immense Confusion One Thing Alone Is Clear. We Are Waiting For Godot To Come

The New Light Above My Table Is A Great Improvement. With All This Darkness Around Me I Feel Less Alone. (pause.) In A Way. (pause.) I Love To Get Up And Move About In It, Then Back Here To... (hesitates) ...me. (pause.)

It Is Better To Adopt The Simplest Explanation, Even If It Is Not Simple, Even If It Does Not Explain Very Much. A Bright Light Is Not Necessary, A Taper Is All One Needs To Live In Strangeness, If It Faithfully Burns.

But I Know What Darkness Is, It Accumulates, Thickens, Then Suddenly Bursts And Drowns Everything.

If I Had The Use Of My Body, I Would Throw It Out The Window.

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.

To What Will Love Not Stoop!

There's No Lack Of Void.

Silence And Darkness Were All I Craved. Well, I Get A Certain Amount Of Both. They Being One.

It Is Suicide To Be Abroad. But What It Is To Be At Home, ... What It Is To Be At Home? A Lingering Dissolution.

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.

Lick Your Neighbor As Yourself!

Words And Images Run Riot In My Head, Pursuing, Flying, Clashing, Merging, Endlessly. But Beyond This Tumult There Is A Great Calm, And A Great Indifference, Never Really To Be Troubled By Anything Again.

We Have Time To Grow Old. The Air Is Full Of Our Cries. But Habit Is A Great Deadener.

Waiting For Godot

I Am Still Alive Then. That May Come In Useful.

I Had Little Talent For Happiness.

Try Again. Fail Again. Try Better.

I Gave Up Before Birth.

But What Matter Whether I Was Born Or Not, Have Lived Or Not, Am Dead Or Merely Dying. I Shall Go On Doing As I Have Always Done, Not Knowing What It Is I Do, Nor Who I Am, Nor Where I Am, Nor If I Am.

I Am Such A Good Man, At Bottom, Such A Good Man, How Is It That Nobody Ever Noticed It?

There Is At Least This To Be Said For Mind, That It Can Dispel Mind.

When A Man In A Forest Thinks He Is Going Forward In A Straight Line, In Reality He Is Going In A Circle, I Did My Best To Go In A Circle, Hoping To Go In A Straight Line.

Where Am I, I Don't Know, I'll Never Know, In The Silence, In The Silence You Don't Know, You Must Go On, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On.

Unhappy, But Not Unhappy Enough.

There's Never An End For The Sea.

Let Us Do Something, While We Have The Chance! ... Let Us Make The Most Of It, Before It Is Too Late! Let Us Represent Worthily For One The Foul Brood To Which A Cruel Fate Consigned Us!

An Imaginative Adventure Does Not Enjoy The Same Corsets As Reportage.

Estragon: I Can't Go On Like This. Vladimir: That's What You Think.

Suffering Is The Main Condition Of The Artistic Experience.

All The Things You Would Do Gladly, Oh Without Enthusiasm, But Gladly, All The Things There Seems No Reason For Your Not Doing, And That You Do Not Do! Can It Be We Are Not Free? It Might Be Worth Looking Into.

I Lay Down Across Her With My Face In Her Breasts And My Hand On Her. We Lay There Without Moving. But Under Us All Moved, And Moved Us, Gently, Up And Down, And From Side To Side.

You Are Not Satisfied Unless Form Is So Strictly Divorced From Content That You Can Comprehend The One Without Almost Without Bothering To Read The Other.

Not To Want To Say, Not To Know What You Want To Say, Not To Be Able To Say What You Think You Want To Say, And Never To Stop Saying, Or Hardly Ever, That Is The Thing To Keep In Mind, Even In The Heat Of Composition.

Abode Where Lost Bodies Roam Each Searching For Its Lost One.

What Is That Unforgettable Line?

Habit Is A Compromise Effected Between An Individual And His Environment.

That's What Hell Must Be Like, Small Chat To The Babbling Of Lethe About The Good Old Days When We Wished We Were Dead.

But He Had Hardly Felt The Absurdity Of Those Things, On The One Hand, And The Necessity Of Those Others, On The Other, (for It Is Rare That The Feeling Of Absurdity Is Not Followed By The Feeling Of Necessity), When He Felt The Absurdity Of Those Things Of Which He Had Just Felt The Necessity (for It Is Rare That The Feeling Of Necessity Is Not Followed By The Feeling Of Absurdity.)

The Confusion Is Not My Invention. We Cannot Listen To A Conversation For Five Minutes Without Being Aware Of The Confusion. It Is All Around Us And Our Only Chance Now Is To Let It In. The Only Chance Of Renovation Is To Open Our Eyes And See The Mess. It Is Not A Mess You Can Make Sense Of.

Do We Mean Love, When We Say Love?

Adulterers, Take Warning, Never Admit.

Two In Distressmake Sorrow Less.

Go On Failing. Go On. Only Next Time, Try To Fail Better.

Estragon: Nothing To Be Done.

That's The Mistake I Made, One Of The Mistakes, To Have Wanted A Story For Myself, Whereas Life Alone Is Enough.

Dying For Dark — And The Darker The Worse. Strange.

If I Was Dead, I Wouldn't Know I Was Dead. That's The Only Thing I Have Against Death. I Want To Enjoy My Death.

How Hideous Is The Semicolon.

I Have Nothing But Wastes And Wilds Of Self-translation Before Me For Many Miserable Months To Come.

We Spend Our Life, It's Ours, Trying To Bring Together In The Same Instant A Ray Of Sunshine And A Free Bench

...you Must Say Words, As Long As There Are Any, Until They Find Me, Until They Say Me, Strange Pain, Strange Sin, You Must Go On, Perhaps It's Done Already, Perhaps They Have Said Me Already, Perhaps They Have Carried Me To The Threshold Of My Story, Before The Door That Opens On My Story, That Would Surprise Me, If It Opens, It Will Be I, It Will Be The 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

The Time Is Perhaps Not Altogether Too Green For The Vile Suggestion That Art Has Nothing To Do With Clarity, Does Not Dabble In The Clear And Does Not Make Clear, And More Than The Light Of Day (or Night) Makes The Subsolar, -lunar, And -stellar Excrement. Art Is The Sun, Moon, And Stars Of The Mind, The Whole Mind.

It's A Rare Thing Not To Have Been Bonny-- Once.

There Is This To Be Said For Dachsunds Of Such Length And Lowness As Nelly, That It Makes Very Little Difference To Their Appearance Whether They Stand, Sit Or Lie.

All Life Long, The Same Questions, The Same Answers.

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.

Love, That Is All I Asked, A Little Love, Daily, Twice Daily, Fifty Years Of Twice Daily Love Like A Paris Horse-butcher's Regular, What Normal Woman Wants Affection?

The Old Endless Chain Of Love, Tolerance, Indifference, Aversion And Disgust

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.

Yes, In My Life, Since We Must Call It So, There Were Three Things, The Inability To Speak, The Inability To Be Silent, And Solitude, That’s What I’ve Had To Make The Best Of.

Use It Or Lose It

The Sky Sinks In The Morning, This Fact Has Been Insufficiently Observed.

What Kind Of Country Is This Where A Woman Can't Weep Her Heart Out On The Highways And Byways Without Being Tormented By Retired Bill-brokers!

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.

[t]he Syndrome Known As Life Is Too Diffuse To Admit Of Palliation. For Every Symptom That Is Eased, Another Is Made Worse. The Horse Leech's Daughter Is A Closed System. Her Quantum Of Wantum Cannot Vary.

Yes, There Is No Denying It, Any Longer, It Is Not You Who Are Dead, But All The Others. So You Get Up And Go To Your Mother, Who Thinks She Is Alive. That's My Impression. But Now I Shall Have To Get Myself Out Of This Ditch. How Joyfully I Would Vanish Here, Sinking Deeper And Deeper Under The Rains.

Words Are The Clothes Thoughts Wear.

It's A Lot To Ask Of One Creature, It's A Lot To Ask, That He Should First Behave As If He Were Not, Then As If He Were, Before Being Admitted To That Peace Where He Neither Is, Nor Is Not, And Where The Language Dies That Permits Of Such Expressions.

Ah, The Old Questions, The Old Answers, There's Nothing Like Them!

I Knew It Would Soon Be The End, So I Played The Part, You Know, The Part Of — How Shall I Say, I Don’t Know.

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better.

Enough Of Acting The Infant Who Has Been Told So Often How He Was Found Under A Cabbage That In The End He Remembers The Exact Spot In The Garden And The Kind Of Life He Led There Before Joining The Family Circle.

All Has Not Been Said And Never Will Be.

That Passed The Time. It Would Have Passed In Any Case. Yes, But Not So Rapidly.

When The Object Is Perceived As Particular And Unique And Not Merely The Member Of A Family, When It Appears Independent Of Any General Notion And Detached From The Sanity Of A Cause, Isolated And Inexplicable In The Light Of Ignorance, Then And Only Then May It Be A Source Of Enchantment.

Life Is Habit. Or Rather Life Is A Succession Of Habits.

I Use The Words You Taught Me. If They Don't Mean Anything Any More, Teach Me Others. Or Let Me Be Silent.

Light Black. From Pole To Pole.

Poets Are The Sense, Philosophers The Intelligence Of Humanity.

Deplorable Mania, When Something Happens, To Inquire What.

The Human Eyelid Is Not Teartight (happily For The Human Eye).

Clear To Me At Last That The Dark I Have Always Struggled To Keep Under Is In Reality My Most

Don't Look For Meaning In The Words. Listen To The Silences.

Perhaps My Best Years Are Gone. When There Was A Chance Of Happiness. But I Wouldn't Want Them Back. Not With The Fire In Me Now. No, I Wouldn't Want Them Back.

...and A Dream Away In Space With Neither Her Nor There Where All The Footsteps Ever Fell Can Never Fare Nearer To Anywhere Nor From Anywhere Further Away. Nor For In The End Again By Degrees Or As Though Switched On Dark Falls There Again That Certain Dark That Alone Certain Ashes Can. Through It Who Knows Yet Another End Beneath A Cloudless Sky Of A Last End If Ever There Had To Be Another Absolutely Had To Be.

In The Landscape Of Extinction, Precision Is Next To Godliness.

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.

The Tears Of The World Are A Constant Quantity. For Each One Who Begins To Weep Somewhere Else Another Stops. The Same Is True Of The Laugh. Let Us Not Then Speak Ill Of Our Generation, It Is Not Any Unhappier Than Its Predecessors. Let Us Not Speak Well Of It Either. Let Us Not Speak Of It At All. It Is True The Population Has Increased.

I Can't Go On. I'll Go On.

In Reality We Are One And All From The Unthinkable First To The No Less Unthinkable Last Glued Together In A Vast Imbrication Of Flesh Without Breach Or Fissure

All Mankind Is Us, Whether We Like It Or Not.

Waiting For Godot

How Long Have I Been Here, What A Question, I've Often Wondered. And Often I Could Answer, An Hour, A Month, A Year, A Century, Depending On What I Meant By Here, And Me, And Being, And There I Never Went Looking For Extravagant Meanings, There I Never Much Varied, Only The Here Would Sometimes Seem To Vary.

I Want Very Much To Be Back In The Caul, On My Back In The Dark Forever.

The Dust Will Not Settle In Our Time. And When It Does Some Great Roaring Machine Will Come And Whirl It All Skyhigh Again.

To Him Who Has Nothing It Is Forbidden Not To Relish Filth.

Dublin University Contains The Cream Of Ireland: Rich And Thick.

Ireland And The Irish

Normally I Didn’t See A Great Deal. I Didn’t Hear A Great Deal Either. I Didn’t Pay Attention. Strictly Speaking I Wasn’t There. Strictly Speaking I Believe I’ve Never Been Anywhere.

Don’t Wait To Be Hunted To Hide, That Was Always My Motto.

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