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The Essential Is Never To Arrive Anywhere, Never To Be Anywhere. The Essential Is To Go On Squirming Forever At The Edge Of The Line, As Long As There Are Waters And Banks And Ravening In Heaven A Sporting God To Plague His Creature, Per Pro His Chosen Shits. I've Swallowed Three Hooks And Am Still Hungry. Hence The Howls. What A Joy To Know Where One Is, And Where One Will Stay, Without Being There. Nothing To Do But Strech Out Comfortably On The Rack, In The Blissful Knowledge You Are Nobody For Eternity.

-Samuel Beckett

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The Essential Is Never

Samuel Beckett

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The Essential Is Never To Arrive Anywhere, Never To Be Anywhere. The Essential Is To Go On Squirming Forever At The Edge Of The Line, As Long As There Are Waters And Banks And Ravening In Heaven A Sporting God To Plague His Creature, Per Pro His Chosen Shits. I've Swallowed Three Hooks And Am Still Hungry. Hence The Howls. What A Joy To Know Where One Is, And Where One Will Stay, Without Being There. Nothing To Do But Strech Out Comfortably On The Rack, In The Blissful Knowledge You Are Nobody For Eternity.

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James Joyce Was A Synthesizer, Trying To Bring In As Much As He Could. I Am An Analyzer, Trying To Leave Out As Much As I Can.

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.

To-morrow, When I Wake, Or Think I Do, What Shall I Say Of To-day?

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

We Are All Born; Some Remain So.

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.

Hamm: We're Not Beginning To... To... Mean Something? Clov: Mean Something! You And I, Mean Something! (brief Laugh.) Ah That's A Good One!

My Life, My Life, Now I Speak Of It As Of Something Over, Now As Of A Joke Which Still Goes On, And It Is Neither, For At The Same Time It Is Over And It Goes On, And Is There Any Tense For That? Watch Wound And Buried By The Watchmaker, Before He Died, Whose Ruined Works Will One Day Speak Of God, To The Worms.

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All That Is Active, All That Is Enveloped In Time And Space, Is Endowed With What Might Be Described As An Abstract, Ideal And Absolute Impermeability.

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

Asking For Help

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!

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

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For In Me There Have Always Been Two Fools, Among Others, One Asking Nothing Better Than To Stay Where He Is And The Other Imagining That Life Might Be Slightly Less Horrible A Little Further On.

Finished, It's Finished, Nearly Finished, It Must Be Nearly Finished. Grain Upon Grain, One By One, And One Day, Suddenly, There's A Heap, A Little Heap, The Impossible Heap. I Can't Be Punished Any More. I'll Go Now To My Kitchen, Ten Feet By Ten Feet By Ten Feet, And Wait For Him To Whistle Me. Nice Dimensions, Nice Proportions, I'll Lean On The Table, And Look At The Wall, And Wait For Him To Whistle Me.

But It Seems Impossible To Speak And Yet Say Nothing, You Think You Have Succeeded, But You Always Overlook Something.

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.)

Our Vulgar Perception Is Not Concerned With Other Than Vulgar Phenomena.

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.

There Is No Use Indicting Words, They Are No Shoddier Than What They Peddle.

The Time-state Of Attainment Eliminates So Accurately The Time-state Of Aspiration, That The Actual Seems The Inevitable, And, All Conscious Intellectual Effort To Reconstitute The Invisible And Unthinkable As A Reality Being Fruitless, We Are Incapable Of Appreciating Our Joy By Comparing It With Our Sorrow.

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.

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

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.

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.

You're On Earth. There's No Cure For That.

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Birth Was The Death Of Him.

Two In Distressmake Sorrow Less.

That Penny Farthing Hell You Call Your Mind

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.

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To Restore Silence Is The Role Of Objects.

What Was God Doing With Himself Before The Creation?

Nothing Is Funnier Than Unhappiness, I Grant You That. Yes, Yes, It's The Most Comical Thing In The World.

Sometimes I Wonder If I'm In My Right Mind. Then It Passes Off And I'm As Intelligent As Ever.

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Estragon: Nothing To Be Done.

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Love Requited Is A Short Circuit.

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Light Black. From Pole To Pole.

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All Has Not Been Said And Never Will Be.

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

Estragon: We Always Find Something, Eh Didi, To Give Us The Impression We Exist? Vladimir: Yes, Yes, We're Magicians.

Waiting For Godot

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.

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

Do We Mean Love, When We Say Love?

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

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

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What Do We Do Now, Now That We Are Happy?

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

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

The Whisky Bears A Grudge Against The Decanter.

What I Assert, Deny, Question, In The Present, I Still Can. But Mostly I Shall Use The Various Tenses Of The Past. For Mostly I Do Not Know, It Is Perhaps No Longer So, It Is Too Soon To Know, I Simply Do Not Know, Perhaps Shall Never Know.

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

We Always Find Something, Eh Didi, To Let Us Think We Exist?

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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.

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

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.

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

Estragon: I'm Like That. Either I Forget Right Away Or I Never Forget.

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.

I Had Seen Faces In Photographs I Might Have Found Beautiful Had I Known Even Vaguely In What Beauty Was Supposed To Consist. And My Father's Face, On His Death-bolster, Had Seemed To Hint At Some Form Of Aesthetics Relevant To Man. But The Faces Of The Living, All Grimace And Flush, Can They Be Described As Objects?

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.

It's Impossible I Should Have A Mind And I Have One

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 Can It Matter To Me, That I Succeed Or Fail ? The Undertaking Is None Of Mine, If They Want Me To Succeed I'll Fail, And Vice Versa, So As Not To Be Rid Of My Tormentors.

I Cannot Explain My Plays. Each Must Find Out For Himself What Is Meant

I, Of Whom I Know Nothing, I Know My Eyes Are Open, Because Of The Tears That Pour From Them Unceasingly.

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

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.

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

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

What Is More True Than Anything Else? To Swim Is True And To Sink Is True. One Cannot Speak Any More Of Being, One Must Speak Onlyof The Mess.

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.

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

The Essential Is Never To Arrive Anywhere, Never To Be Anywhere. The Essential Is To Go On Squirming Forever At The Edge Of The Line, As Long As There Are Waters And Banks And Ravening In Heaven A Sporting God To Plague His Creature, Per Pro His Chosen Shits. I've Swallowed Three Hooks And Am Still Hungry. Hence The Howls. What A Joy To Know Where One Is, And Where One Will Stay, Without Being There. Nothing To Do But Strech Out Comfortably On The Rack, In The Blissful Knowledge You Are Nobody For Eternity.

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.

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

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

Poets Are The Sense, Philosophers The Intelligence Of Humanity.

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.

Personally I Have No Bone To Pick With Graveyards, I Take The Air There Willingly, Perhaps More Willingly Than Elsewhere, When Take The Air I Must.

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

We Should Have Thought Of It When The World Was Young, In The Nineties.

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

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Words Are The Clothes Thoughts Wear.

That Desert Of Loneliness And Recrimination That Men Call Love.

The End Of A Life Is Always Vivifying.

Dance First. Think Later. It's The Natural Order.

The Fact Is, It Seems, That The Most You Can Hope Is To Be A Little Less, In The End, The Creature You Were In The Beginning, And The Middle.

There's Man All Over For You, Blaming On His Boots The Fault Of His Feet.

Nothing Is More Real Than Nothing.

Waiting For Godot

I Gave Up Before Birth.

Mysterious Affair, Electricity.

To Find A Form That Accommodates The Shape Of The Mess, That Is The Task Of The Artist Now.

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

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

Do They [the Publishers Of Murphy] Not Understand That If The Book Is Slightly Obscure It Is Because It Is A Compression And Thatto Compress It Further Can Only Make It More Obscure?

What Are We Doing Here, That Is The Question.

Waiting For Godot

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

There Is No Escape From Yesterday Because Yesterday Has Deformed Us, Or Been Deformed By Us. The Mood Is Of No Importance. Deformation Has Taken Place.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Creation Of The World Did Not Take Place Once And For All Time, But Takes Place Every Day.

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

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

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.

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.

The Pendulum Oscillates Between These Two Terms: Suffering-that Opens A Window On The Real And Is The Main Condition Of The Artistic Experience, And Boredom ... That Must Be Considered As The Most Tolerable Because The Most Durable Of Human Evils.

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

I Have My Faults, But Changing My Tune Is Not One Of Them.

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.

No Painting Is More Replete Than Mondrian's.

Yes, There Were Times When I Forgot Not Only Who I Was But That I Was, Forgot To Be.

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

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

Vladimir: What Do They Say? Estragon: They Talk About Their Lives. Vladimir: To Have Lived Is Not Enough For Them. Estragon: They Have To Talk About It.

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

I Have Always Been Amazed At My Contemporaries’ Lack Of Finesse, I Whose Soul Writhed From Morning To Night, In The Mere Quest Of Itself.

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?

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

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.

Hardly Had The Glow Been Kindled By Some Good Deed On Your Part Or By Some Little Triumph Over Your Rivals Or By A Word Of Praisefrom Your Parents Or Mentors When It Would Begin To Cool And Fade Leaving You In A Very Short Time As Chill And Dim As Before.

You Would Do Better, At Least No Worse, To Obliterate Texts Than To Blacken Margins, To Fill In The Holes Of Words Till All Is Blank And Flat And The Whole Ghastly Business Looks Like What It Is, Senseless, Speechless, Issueless Misery.

My Mistakes Are My Life.

God Is Love. Yes Or No? No.

To Find A Form That Accommodates The Mess, That Is The Task Of The Artist Now.

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.

Words Fail, There Are Times When Even They Fail.

If You Do Not Love Me I Shall Not Be Loved If I Do Not Love You I Shall Not Love.

Silence, Yes, But What Silence! For It Is All Very Fine To Keep Silence, But One Has Also To Consider The Kind Of Silence One Keeps.

Every Word Is Like An Unnecessary Stain On Silence And Nothingness.

We Are Not Saints, But We Have Kept Our Appointment. How Many People Can Boast As Much?

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.

[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.

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.

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.

The Essential Doesn't Change.

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!

The Only Thing You Must Never Speak Of Is Your Happiness.

Humbly To Ask A Favour Of People Who Are On The Point Of Knocking Your Brains Out Sometimes Produces Good Results.

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.

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

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.

The Day You Die Is Just Like Any Other, Only Shorter.

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.

What Is That Unforgettable Line?

Lick Your Neighbor As Yourself!

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