They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

- Samuel Beckett

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

- Samuel Beckett

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.

- Samuel Beckett

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

- Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

- Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

- Samuel Beckett

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

- Samuel Beckett

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

- Samuel Beckett

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

- Samuel Beckett

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

- Samuel Beckett

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

- Samuel Beckett

Habit is a great deadener.

- Samuel Beckett

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

- Samuel Beckett

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.

- Samuel Beckett

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.

- Samuel Beckett

Birth was the death of him.

- Samuel Beckett

Do we mean love, when we say love?

- Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

- Samuel Beckett

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.

- Samuel Beckett

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

- Samuel Beckett