Samuel Beckett Quotes on Identity
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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.
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A mask of dirty old hairy leather, with two holes and a slit, it was too far gone for the old trick of please your honour and God reward you and pity upon me. It was disastrous.
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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.
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It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger.
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Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.
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What do you expect, one is what one is, partly at least.
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Tears and laughter, they are so much Gaelic to me.
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To go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I'll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time.
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Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.