12 Samuel Beckett Quotes on Suffering

Samuel Beckett quotes on suffering

1. Hamm: Can there be misery (he yawns) loftier than mine?

3. Nell: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness. Nagg: Oh? Nell: Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

10. But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

14. 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.

16. 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.

32. It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

35. I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

74. I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

78. 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 a sporting god to plague his creatures, per pro his chosen shits.

79. 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.

83. Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little yellow flame feebly darting from side to side, panting, as if straining to tear itself from its wick, it should never have been lit, or it should never have been fed, or it should have been put out, put out, it should have been let go out.

84. 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.