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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.

-Samuel Beckett

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The Fact Would Seem

Samuel Beckett

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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.

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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.

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

Do You Always Believe In The Life To Come? Mine Was Always That.

Art Has Always Been This--pure Interrogation, Rhetorical Question Less The Rhetoric--whatever Else It May Have Been Obliged By Social Reality To Appear.

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

To Restore Silence Is The Role Of Objects.

Against The Charitable Gesture There Is No Defence.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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?

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

Poets Are The Sense, Philosophers The Intelligence Of Humanity.

How Time Flies When One Has Fun!

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.

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

Nothing Happens. Nobody Comes, Nobody Goes. It's Awful.

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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.

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

Mysterious Affair, Electricity.

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.

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

Ireland And The Irish

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

Waiting For Godot

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.

There Are Two Moments Worthwhile In Writing, The One When You Start And The Other When You Throw It In The Waste-paper Basket.

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

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

Waiting For Godot

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

The Essential Doesn't Change.

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.

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

The Loss Of My Sight Was A Great Fillip. If I Could Go Deaf And Dumb I Think I Might Pant On To Be A Hundred.

My Keepers, Why Keepers, I'm In No Danger Of Stirring An Inch, Ah I See, It's To Make Me Think I'm A Prisoner, Frantic With Corporeality, Rearing To Get Out And Away.

There Is Man In His Entirety, Blaming His Shoe When His Foot Is Guilty.

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

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 Situation Is That Of Him Who Is Helpless, Cannot Act, In The Event Cannot Paint, Since He Is Obliged To Paint. The Act Is Of Him Who, Helpless, Unable To Act, Acts, In The Event Paints, Since He Is Obliged To Paint.

Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.' You Won't Believe What You Can Accomplish By Attempting The Impossible With The Courage To Repeatedly Fail Better.

The Only Sin Is The Sin Of Being Born.

Suffering Is The Main Condition Of The Artistic Experience.

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.

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.

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

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.

All Poetry, As Discriminated From The Various Paradigms Of Prosody, Is Prayer.

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

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

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.

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

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.

My Work Is A Matter Of Fundamental Sounds (no Joke Intended) Made As Fully As Possible, And I Accept Responsibility For Nothing Else. If People Want To Have Headaches Among The Overtones, Let Them. And Provide Their Own Aspirin.

That Penny Farthing Hell You Call Your Mind

God Is Love. Yes Or No? No.

Do We Mean Love, When We Say Love?

In The Name Of Bacon Will You Chicken Me Up That Egg. Shall I Swallow Cave-phantoms?

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

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

Waiting For Godot

I Had Little Talent For Happiness.

How Can One Better Magnify The Almighty Than By Sniggering With Him At His Little Jokes, Particularly The Poorer Ones?

Poets Are The Sense, Philosophers The Intelligence Of Humanity.

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

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

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.

Yes, Light, There Is No Other Word For It.

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

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

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.

We All Are Born Mad. Some Remain So.

Waiting For Godot

Enough To Know No Knowing.

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.

Estragon: Nothing To Be Done.

That Double-headed Monster Of Damnation And Salvation--time.

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

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.

James Joyce: His Writing Is Not About Something. It Is The Thing Itself.

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.

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.

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

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

No Painting Is More Replete Than Mondrian's.

The Whisky Bears A Grudge Against The Decanter.

I Marshalled The Words And Opened My Mouth, Thinking I Would Hear Them. But All I Heard Was A Kind Of Rattle, Unintelligible Even To Me Who Knew What Was Intended.

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

There's Never An End For The Sea.

He Who Has Waited Long Enough, Will Wait Forever. And There Comes The Hour When Nothing More Can Happen And Nobody More Can Come And All Is Ended But The Waiting That Knows Itself In Vain.

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.

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.

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.

The Essential Is To Go On Squirming Forever At The End Of The Line, As Long As There Are Waters And Banks And Ravening In Heaven Asporting God To Plague His Creature, Per Pro His Chosen Shits.

In My Head There Are Several Windows, That I Do Know, But Perhaps It Is Always The Same One, Open Variously On The Parading Universe.

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

Sloth Is All Passions The Most Powerful.

There's No Lack Of Void.

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.

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

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

Nothing Is Funnier Than Unhappiness.

As It Is With The Love Of The Body, So With The Friendship Of The Mind, The Full Is Only Reached By Admittance To The Most Retired Places.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing Is More Real Than Nothing.

Waiting For Godot

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.

[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 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.

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

It Was The Only Way To Progress, To Stop.

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

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

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

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

Deplorable Mania, When Something Happens, To Inquire What.

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?

Light Black. From Pole To Pole.

We Are All Born; Some Remain So.

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!

Art Has Nothing To Do With Clarity, Does Not Dabble In The Clear And Does Not Make Clear

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

...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

All Has Not Been Said And Never Will Be.

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

Personally I Have No Bone To Pick With Graveyards.

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

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.

Yesterday Is Not A Milestone That Has Been Passed, But A Daystone On The Beaten Track Of The Years, And Irremediably Part Of Us, Within Us, Heavy And Dangerous. We Are Not Merely More Weary Because Of Yesterday, We Are Other, No Longer What We Were Before The Calamity Of Yesterday.

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

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

The Memory Came Faint And Cold Of The Story I Might Have Told, A Story In The Likeness Of My Life, I Mean Without The Courage To End Or The Strength To Go On.

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

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.

Try Again. Fail Again. Try Better.

Name, No, Nothing Is Nameable, Tell, No, Nothing Can Be Told, What Then, I Don't Know, I Shouldn't Have Begun.

People Are Bloody Ignorant Apes.

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

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!

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 Only Thing You Must Never Speak Of Is Your Happiness.

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

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.

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

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.

Hold The Old Holding Hand. Hold And Be Held. Plod On And Never Recede. Slowly With Never A Pause Plod On And Never Recede.

Words Are All We Have.

Don't Touch Me! Don't Question Me! Don't Speak To Me! Stay With Me!

Waiting For Godot

What Is That Unforgettable Line?

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.

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.

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.

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

Birth Was The Death Of Him.

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.

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.

That Desert Of Loneliness And Recrimination That Men Call Love.

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.

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

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

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

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

Lick Your Neighbor As Yourself!

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.

If By Godot I Had Meant God I Would Have Said God, And Not Godot.

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.

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.

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

Waiting For Godot

They Never Lynch Children, Babies, No Matter What They Do They Are Whitewashed In Advance.

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

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

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?

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.

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

What Are We Doing Here, That Is The Question.

Waiting For Godot

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Bicycle Is A Great Good. But It Can Turn Nasty, If Ill Employed.

I Am Interested In The Shape Of Ideas Even If I Do Not Believe In Them. There Is A Wonderful Sentence In Augustine . . . "do Not Despair: One Of The Thieves Was Saved; Do Not Presume: One Of The Thieves Was Damned." That Sentence Had A Wonderful Shape. It Is The Shape That Matters.

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