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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.

-Samuel Beckett

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Words And Images Run

Samuel Beckett

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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.

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More From Samuel Beckett

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.

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

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

God Is A Witness That Cannot Be Sworn.

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.

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.

How Time Flies When One Has Fun!

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

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.

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

Waiting For Godot

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.

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

Sloth Is All Passions The Most Powerful.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Unhappy, But Not Unhappy Enough.

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

Love Requited Is A Short Circuit.

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

Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Perhaps That's What I Feel, An Outside And An Inside And Me In The Middle, Perhaps That's What I Am, The Thing That Divides The World In Two, On The One Side The Outside, On The Other The Inside, That Can Be As Thin As Foil, I'm Neither One Side Nor The Other, I'm In The Middle, I'm The Partition, I've Two Surfaces And No Thickness, Perhaps That's What I Feel, Myself Vibrating, I'm The Tympanum, On The One Hand The Mind, On The Other The World, I Don't Belong To Either.

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!

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.

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.

Birth Was The Death Of Him.

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.

People Are Bloody Ignorant Apes.

Make Sense Who May. I Switch Off.

No Painting Is More Replete Than Mondrian's.

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.)

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

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

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.

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

My Notes Have A Curious Tendency, As I Realize At Last, To Annihilate All They Purport To Record.

Lick Your Neighbor As Yourself!

We All Are Born Mad. Some Remain So.

Waiting For Godot

Try Again. Fail Again. Try Better.

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

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.

What Are We Doing Here, That Is The Question.

Waiting For Godot

Mysterious Affair, Electricity.

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.

With All This Darkness Round Me I Feel Less Alone.

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

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

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.

...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

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!

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better.

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.

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

Waiting For Godot

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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?

What Was God Doing With Himself Before The Creation?

I Don’t Like Animals. It’s A Strange Thing, I Don’t Like Men And I Don’t Like Animals. As For God, He Is Beginning To Disgust Me.

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.

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.

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.

Poets Are The Sense, Philosophers The Intelligence Of Humanity.

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.

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

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.

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

There's Never An End For The Sea.

The Only Sin Is The Sin Of Being Born.

All Has Not Been Said And Never Will Be.

Unfathomable Mind, Now Beacon, Now Sea.

We Could Have Saved Sixpence. We Could Have Saved Fivepence. But At What Cost?

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.

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

Personally I Have No Bone To Pick With Graveyards.

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.

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.

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.

The Whisky Bears A Grudge Against The Decanter.

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.

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.

Enough To Know No Knowing.

Do We Mean Love, When We Say Love?

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

Until The Day When, Your Endurance Gone, In This World For You Without Arms, You Catch Up In Yours The First Mangy Cur You Meet, Carry It For The Time Needed For It To Love It And You It, Then Throw It Away.

Watt Had Watched People Smile And Thought He Understood How It Was Done.

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

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

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.

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

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

Habit Is A Great Deadener.

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

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.

We Are All Born; Some Remain So.

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

Nothing Is Funnier Than Unhappiness.

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

...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.

To What Will Love Not Stoop!

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

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.

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?

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.

That Desert Of Loneliness And Recrimination That Men Call Love.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Better Hope Deferred Than None.

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

Waiting For Godot

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

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.

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

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.

That Penny Farthing Hell You Call Your Mind

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?

My Mistakes Are My Life.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Waiting For Godot

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.

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

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.

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

They Give Birth Astride Of A Grave, The Light Gleams An Instant, Then It's Night Once More.

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

Words Are The Clothes Thoughts Wear.

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

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

Asking For Help

So All Things Limp Together For The Only Possible.

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.

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.

It Is Useless Not To Seek, Not To Want, For When You Cease To Seek You Start To Find, And When You Cease To Want, Then Life Begins To Ram Her Fish And Chips Down Your Gullet Until You Puke, And Then The Puke Down Your Gullet Until You Puke The Puke, And Then The Puked Puke Until You Begin To Like It.

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.

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.

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.

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

Then I Went Back Into The House And Wrote, It Is Midnight. The Rain Is Beating On The Windows. It Was Not Midnight. It Was Not Raining.

Words Are All We Have.

God Is Love. Yes Or No? No.

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

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.)

There's No Lack Of Void.

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

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.

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.

I Gave Up Before Birth.

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.

Friendship, According To Proust, Is The Negation Of That Irremediable Solitude To Which Every Human Being Is Condemned.

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.

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.

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

The End Of A Life Is Always Vivifying.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Deplorable Mania, When Something Happens, To Inquire What.

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

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