Beckett Quotes

We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime's rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively.

I've played Beckett. I put on in the 1950s the first Australian production of 'Waiting for Godot.' I played Estragon. The most interesting conversation I've had about Beckett was with a Dublin taxi driver.

I'd never done any Beckett before 'Krapp,' and I haven't done any of his other plays since. I've always felt that 'Krapp' is an autobiographical piece.

I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

There's something hopeful about 'Endgame.' Beckett strips everything away and asks what remains. There's this surgical dissection of the soul, but at the bottom, you find shafts of light.

He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.

The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific.

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.

I admire [Samuel] Beckett, but I am totally against him. He seeks no improvement.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

All pleas between clergymen and laymen shall be tried in the king's court .… All clergymen, when accused of any crime, shall be tried in the king's courts …. All prelates, who hold baronies of the king, shall perform the same services with other barons.

Beckett had an unerring light on things, which I much appreciated.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Beckett's 'Stories and Texts for Nothing' is probably my favorite book.

I would say recently I've gotten back to perusing [Samuel] Beckett's novels. Listening to the way Donald Trump speaks without saying anything has made me think about language.

Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Beckett to me are the most revolutionary.

These are your beautiful days, Julia Beckett," he promised softly.

The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.

My son is actually named after Beck, the musician. We heard Beck on the radio and thought that was a good nickname for a child. We named our son Beckett so we could call him Beck - we reverse engineered. And then after he was born and I saw the name on the birth certificate I realized Beckett was a really pretentious name, way too literary. Luckily he's grown into it. We nearly named my second son Dashiell. Can you imagine? Beckett and Dashiell. It would have been a disaster of pretentiousness.