Quotes About Beckett

#1. I wish the choice I have to make today was so simple. I realise I have the choice to believe in two terrible things. Either Damian is a murderer or Beckett arrested an innocent man.
Just thinking about it is making my head hurt.
Well then forget your head, listen to your heart.

Richard Castle

#2. Beckett stood in his office dressed to the nines: his best suit, cufflinks, amazing shoes, and expensive sunglasses. Underneath he had so many weapons that a good speed bump would blow him off the face of the earth.

Debra Anastasia

#3. Let me have men about me that are fat,
... Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
"You're on Earth. There's no cure for that." - - Samuel Beckett

William Shakespeare

#4. Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice.

Padgett Powell

#5. Beckett pulled Blake's face back to look at him and held it in his hand.
Never alone, bro. You're never alone as long as I live.

Debra Anastasia

#6. Antigone: We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us.
Ismene: Who said that?
Antigone: Hegel.
Ismene: Sounds more like Beckett.
Antigone: He was paraphrasing Hegel.
Ismene: I don't think so.

Anne Carson

#7. Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
...On the other hand, he SAID it.

Art Spiegelman

#8. Eve followed him into the building. No one would dare frisk her, and she entered Beckett's inner sanctum fully armed - not that she needed her weapons.

Debra Anastasia

#9. As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

John Hurt

#10. So you're the music note, Beckett's obviously the knife, who's the cross?" She stroked Blake's tattoo.
"You're about to find out. We're headed to church." Blake leaned in to kiss her forehead.
"Of course we are. That makes perfect sense." From hell to heaven.

Debra Anastasia

#11. Beckett had a lot of layers. She used to hate herself for falling in love with him, but now she felt like she might be the only one qualified to do so.

Debra Anastasia

#12. According to Beckett's or Kafka's law, there is immobility beyond movement: beyond standing up, there is sitting down, and beyond sitting down, lying down, beyond which one finally dissipates.

Gilles Deleuze

#13. Eve commanded her hostage to open the door and look calm. She didn't turn around again, but Beckett knew what she'd done. She'd crossed some line she'd drawn for herself. She'd said his name, kissed him, and saved him.
She'd done what he couldn't do for himself.

Debra Anastasia

#14. The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.

Val Kilmer

#15. Eve. That torpedo mind-fuck sex was outrageous and fantastically titillating. Titi-fuck-illating. But there was something else as well. Emotional, a small voice in Beckett's head suggested. Connected. Well, shit. That seemed just about right. Definitely something new.

Debra Anastasia

#16. Every night after that, Blake would show up and stand next to Beckett, head down, hands still.

Debra Anastasia

#17. Rick's a beater. He likes it. When I first got here, he beat all the kids. I told him I wanted to take it for everybody." Beckett had shrugged like he'd just eaten the last cookie. "I'm a big fucking bastard. I can handle it.

Debra Anastasia

#18. Samuel Beckett's estate will not license productions of his plays that are not performed as written.

Terry Teachout

#19. In his head Beckett put the two of them in a big snow globe with glitter that he could shake when he wanted them to fucking sparkle together. Perfect in their condo with a dog and a kid and glitter.

Debra Anastasia

#20. The conversation with the dead is one of the great pleasures of life. Somebody who is sitting reading Chekhov, Beckett, reading Toni Morrison - you are not in any way dead, in many ways you are intensely alive.

Cornel West

#21. He gripped the edge of the desk. "I've done my best to make sure my brothers have no blood on their hands," he said with menacing quiet. "I'm going to hell for all three of us." Beckett said defiantly.

Debra Anastasia

#22. Her smile was like a Samuel Beckett play - easy to read but difficult to interpret.

Bob Smith

#23. I have 800 books of just Samuel Beckett's work, tons of his correspondence, personal letters that he wrote. I have copies of plays he used when he directed, so all of his handwritten notes are in the corners of the page.

John Larroquette

#24. She had to kill him. She had to kill Beckett the next time she saw him or all she'd done to become an exquisite monster would be for nothing.

Debra Anastasia

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

Edward Albee

#26. I just completed a long car trip on a Sunday in August with two small children, which believe me is enough to convince you that Samuel Beckett was right about everything.

Lev Grossman

#27. Cole updated Beckett:
Stay where u r. Not sure how this will go. He's playing now.
Cole glanced at Beckett's response:
Ave Fuckong Mariea?
Cole wondered how to put it:
No, just noise. Not music.
Beckett's next message had no typos:
Shit

Debra Anastasia

#28. My favourite writer is Beckett and I keep going back to wallow in his work like a deep pool of dark humour or like an oxygen tank when you can't breath in a world consumed by piety, hypocrisy and self-satisfaction.

Simon Critchley

#29. In many ways, women are death's natural companions. Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but a death. Samuel Beckett wrote that women "give birth astride of a grave." Mother Nature is indeed a real mother, creating and destroying in a constant loop.

Caitlin Doughty

#30. Eve grew uneasy. She had to tell Beckett there was another wedding to attend from a distance. Blake had refused to appoint anyone else as best man. He said it was Beckett's place, whether he filled it or not. Cole would officiate.

Debra Anastasia

#31. 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.

Simon McBurney

#32. When she saw Blake staring at her over Beckett's shoulder, Livia stumbled a bit. His gaze was so intense. So Blake. Beckett kept her steady. She could feel his whole body smiling.

Debra Anastasia

#33. Save Cole," Beckett told her as he straddled the motorcycle. "I don't intend to put my life at a premium, so no matter what happens, just get him out.

Debra Anastasia

#34. But he did see them dance. He laughed out loud remembering when he'd danced with Kyle. She hardly seemed the same person. And Cole needed some serious help in the moves department.
"Fuck, brother, you're making us all look bad!" Beckett shouted at the screen.

Debra Anastasia

#35. Then one night Blake had saved them all.
Blake made the old organ into a tool. You could see right into his soul through the notes he played. Beckett knew why Blake had Jesus' eyes. Kindness, hope, and light filled the music he played.

Debra Anastasia

#36. Simple shit makes this chick crap bubbles and rainbows -Beckett

Debra Anastasia

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

Harold Pinter

#38. The Australian Gerald Murnane, a genius on the level of Beckett, is known in Australia and Sweden but almost nowhere else. And I loved Reality Hunger, David Shields' recent novel take on the art of the novel.

Teju Cole

#39. Food is a necessary component to life. People can live without Renoir, Mozart, Gaudi, Beckett, but they cannot live without food.

Grant Achatz

#40. Eve had wet cheeks when she finally answered a completely unaware Beckett. "It was amazing. It was everything I'll never have." She leaned down and pressed her lips to his hair. "Loving you is more of a curse than anything else.

Debra Anastasia

#41. Impossible is just the shit nobody's tried yet," Beckett shot back. "My balls are way too big not to hope for the best.

Debra Anastasia

#42. Beckett, love is something I can't do. I don't even know that I believe in it, it's like unicorns, you want to believe in them, but have you ever seen one?

~Mitchell

S.M. Stryker

#43. Kamby Bolongo Mean River is an original and fearless fiction. It bears genetic traces of Beckett and Stein, but Robert Lopez's powerful cadences and bleak, joyful wit are all his own.

Sam Lipsyte

#44. In Kamby Bolongo Mean River damage and delusion walk hand in hand, and everything we think we know is gradually called into question. Reading like a cross between Samuel Beckett's 'The Calmative' and Gordon Lish's Dear Mr. Capote, Robert Lopez's new novel gets under your skin and latches on.

Brian Evenson

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

John Updike

#46. I'm going to hell, Livia," he said.
"I'm going to hell for all three of us," Beckett said defiantly. Only now did he pull his hand away.
"I think you might be a better man than you give yourself credit for," Livia said, trying to catch his eye again.

Debra Anastasia

#47. When the Dublin-born Beckett was asked by a Parisian journalist whether he was English, he replied, 'On the contrary.

Terry Eagleton

#48. The punchline of the story relates to an American academic saying of Beckett, 'He doesn't give a fuck about people. He's an artist.' At this point Beckett raised his voice above the clatter of afternoon tea and shouted, 'But I do give a fuck about people! I do give a fuck!

James Knowlson

#49. Beckett . . . Joyce . . . Proust . . . Shakespeare

Harold Bloom

#50. Know this: I love you so fucking much. No other person has been to me what you are. No one else ever will be. - Beckett

Debra Anastasia

#51. Lord, this man before me is known to you. Beckett's soul is littered with sins that he committed to protect Blake and me. "
Beckett interrupted.
"Some of those sins were for the sake of my horny penis.

Debra Anastasia

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

Susanna Kearsley

#53. And when Deirdre Bair went to interview Beckett for the biography the first thing he said was, 'So you've come to demonstrate that it was all, after all, autobiographical.

Tim Parks

#54. But as attractive as a tropical island alone with Eve might be, Beckett knew he could never go. He couldn't be that far from his brothers. What if one of them needed him? What if Eve's dad needed her? Family was family.

Debra Anastasia

#55. Cole grabbed a fistful of his own hair. Beckett, I met the most amazing girl this morning. I can't think straight.

Debra Anastasia

#56. She strode up some steps and banged on the door. "Now you play nice or I'll put you in the dog house."(Alannah)
"Woof."(Christopher Beckett)

Dana Marie Bell

#57. I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.

Harold Pinter

#58. I shall always be depressed," Beckett concluded, "but what comforts me is the realization that I can now accept this dark side as the commanding side of my personality. In accepting it, I will make it work for me.

Mason Currey

#59. 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.

William S. Burroughs

#60. On the other hand, who knows what I know or whether what I know is even true? [Patrick Beckett]

Stephen Lloyd Jones

#61. Pain flashed through his eyes. "Dammit, Evie." Steam huffed against my mouth. "I'm fucking drowning in my desire to be near you, to touch you" - he dropped his brow on mine and inhaled - "to be inside you." ~ Jesse Beckett

Pam Godwin

#62. Chris reached for the button to raise the window, as if a thin layer of glass could ever protect him from Beckett.

Debra Anastasia

#63. Ryder - the oldest, Avery continued. He's standing as job boss on this project. Owen's the detail guy, runs the numbers, makes the calls, takes the meetings. Or most of them. Beckett's an architect.

Nora Roberts

#64. All writing is a sin against speechlessness,' Beckett had said. He would have stopped, I thought, if he could.

Tim Parks

#65. Beckett despite his professed preference for Racine, is master and victim, and as such pervades Beckett's canonical drama, Endgame. Beckett's Hamlet follows the French model, in which excessive consciousness negates action, which is at some distance from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Harold Bloom

#66. 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.

Michel Foucault

#67. taking his lead from Beckett's mighty Unnamable. I can't go on. I'll go on.

Salman Rushdie

#68. Opens up a whole new view of Beckett. The strong mutual attraction between Beckett and Cunard may help explain the leftist political views he expressed both in these superb and long-neglected translations for Negro and elsewhere in his work.

Barney Rosset

#69. Beckett planned to go out with a shit-eating grin because, well, fuck you, world.

Debra Anastasia

#70. Know this: I love you so fucking much," Beckett said. "No other person has been to me what you are. No one else ever will be." He leaned down and gave her the sweetest, gentlest kiss.

Debra Anastasia

#71. You have infiltrated me completely, you make me feel alive Harlow, and I love that feeling. I have had my heart walled off for so long, and you have melted it so I can feel again. ~Beckett

S.M. Stryker

#72. Samuel Beckett wrote, "Fail, fail again. Fail better.

Keith Ferrazzi

#73. Silence.
Then the night echoed with Beckett's anguished wail. NOT MY BROTHERS!

Debra Anastasia

#74. Fairy tales, before they were sanitized, were very dark, and kids love that. 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman feels like Beckett for kids. I think there's plenty of room for that. And I think there's a danger of being too patronizing to children, having things too sanitized.

Edward Carey

#75. It was a denim jacket. With this cover in place, Mouse hastily got his pants back in order. Instead of a teacher, as he'd expected, the new kid, Beckett Taylor, had bestowed dignity upon him.

Debra Anastasia

#76. Instead of sounding like a Beckett-style threat, Dr. Lavender's observation solidified something. Livia would live for love. Today will count.

Debra Anastasia

#77. Finally Cole spoke. "Shall we exchange rings?" He nodded at Beckett, who let the rings fall into Cole's hands as if it were the most important job he'd ever done. Perhaps to him it was.

Debra Anastasia

#78. Beckett's gruff voice moved her veil as he spoke, Happy wedding, Whitebread. But please, don't worry about this.

Debra Anastasia

#79. I can't do this anymore if it's not with you. Fuck me straight to hell." ~Eve to Beckett

Debra Anastasia

#80. The handshake got a third arm as Blake entered and joined in. This was magic for Beckett, pure and simple. The world slowed down, and his cares melted away as he looked from face to face. He loved these men so fiercely, it'd probably scare them if they knew.

Debra Anastasia

#81. I was in Hollis' band for eight years, playing drums. At one time we had Barry Beckett, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood - everybody but Roger Hawkins. We had a hell of a band.

Donnie Fritts

#82. Looking her in her now tear-filled eyes, I cupped her face in my hands. "We may not be together, but we will never be through. ~ Beckett

S.M. Stryker

#83. But Beckett never flinched. She felt his throat vibrate as he sighed her name with relief. He tilted his head back until it rested on hers.
"Don't ever die in my head again. Please, never again," he told her, his voice raspy.

Debra Anastasia

#84. I think a call to Chaos is in order," Blake said, looking at Cole.
Cole nodded, and Beckett smiled. "Thanks," he said.

Debra Anastasia

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

Franz Wright

#86. We're like dominoes, Beckett and I. I've tipped us forward until everything is set in motion. I can't stop us from colliding. I should enjoy the fall while it lasts. But I know the end is coming too. The quiet. The day where everything has fallen and there's nothing left but a mess.

Rebecca Paula

#87. So that's how it is. Today's the big day." Beckett nodded with a wry smile.
He knows.
He was naked now. "How you want me, baby? Execution style? Or you want to look me in the eyes?

Debra Anastasia

#88. I think he fucked me stupid- McKenzie Matthews- Being Beckett's

P.S. Berryman

#89. People ask me all the time, "What are your influences? Are you trying to do Beckett?" It's like, "No, I'm trying to do me." Whatever that is. I don't know what that is, but that's the basis. I'm trying to be true and I'm trying to be honest.

Charlie Kaufman

#90. Ben Marcus has created an innovative and unflinching portrait of the turmoil of the human condition, providing the reader a most rare gift: something truly new. Notable American Women contains strains of Donald Antrim and Samuel Beckett but is beholden to neither; it is a brave, original book.

Myla Goldberg

#91. When your lips move, it makes me want to take my pants off right here. Beckett went in for a kiss.

Debra Anastasia

#92. Discovering Samuel Beckett in college was a big deal for me. I realized you could be very funny and very dark at the same time.

Billy Collins

#93. Blake lifted a plastic champagne flute filled with bubbling apple cider. "To Beckett - we wouldn't be here without him."
"To Beckett," the others agreed.

Debra Anastasia

#94. If I watched your church burn down, would you kill me?"
Cole looked suspicious. "No, and that's a bizarre question."
"If I watched Kyle die, would you kill me?"
Cole's eyes practically glowed red.
Beckett nodded. "You might already have the answer to what's hurting you.

Debra Anastasia

#95. I'm concerned about the woman you're holding prisoner in there," Beckett said. "Knock three times if you're being held against your will."
Phoebe gasped and answered, "I'm fine, too."
"Good." Beckett said with a chuckle. "I was afraid I'd have to call the cops on my cop brother.

Elle James

#96. Samuel Beckett was saying, in a new biography, that he could remember being in the womb, which, of course, is a bit far-fetched. But he's an Irishman, so nothing's too far-fetched.

Frank McCourt

#97. What is it you want, Finley Sinclair?"
Some peace. Some healing. To hear God's voice again.
I wanted to find my brother's Ireland. To put it into song.
And I wanted my heart back.
"I'll know it when I find it." I looked past Beckett and into the night sky. "Or when it finds me.

Jenny B. Jones

#98. Maybe he could have changed his mind. Maybe he could have continued thinking only about himself. But Beckett had seen her face. He'd been looking at her eyes when the grateful girl reached up to give Eve a hug.

Debra Anastasia

#99. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett

Pema Chodron

#100. Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.

Edward Albee