Everything is supposed to be quite after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with glee.
I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

I became a non-person in the Boston fog.

The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only with the electric clocks, but with the wind-up kind, too. The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.
There was nothing i could do about it. As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said- and calendars.

No art is possible without a dance with death.

And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and i love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.

Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. 

If I hadn't spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn't have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

The most important thing I learned was that when a person dies he only appears to die. he is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always will exist. It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath—mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she had found in gift shops. 

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

His eyes were closed. when he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere. He lost consciousness, but the music went on. he dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that. 

"well, here we are Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased'

Pozzo: I don't seem to be able . . . (long hesitation) to depart. 
Estragon: Such is life

Vladimir: Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other (he searches for the contrary of saved) damned.
Estragon: Saved from what?

We are all born mad. Some remain so

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!

But that is not the question. Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.

To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day?

The bastard! He doesn't exist!

 . .in all that what truth will there be? Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener.

Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. . .In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
[they do not move]

SAMUEL BECKETT QUOTES

Each word seemed to me an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

I dont like animals. It's a strange thing, I dont like man and I dont like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.

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

Yes, I don't know why, but I have never been disappointed, and I often was in the early days, without feeling at the same time, or a moment later, an undeniable relief.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead

Birth was the death of him.

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window

If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness

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.

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.

Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art.

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!

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

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

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.

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

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

"Sex is something I really don't understand too hot.  You never know where the hell you are.  I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away.  Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass.  I broke it, though, the same week I made it - the same night, as a matter of fact."

"I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it."

"People always think something's all true."

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.  It's awful.  If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera.  It's terrible."

"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?  Nobody."

"Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented.  If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it.  I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will."

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something.  Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery.  People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap.  Who wants flowers when you're dead?  Nobody."

"This fall I think you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind.  The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom.  He just keeps falling and falling.  The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with.  Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with.  So they gave up looking.  They gave it up before they ever really even got started."  

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.  You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know.  Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.  Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.  You'll learn from them - if you want to.  Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.  It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.  And it isn't education.  It's history.  It's poetry."  

"She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."

"I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when i feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. i like Jesus and all, but I dont care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the disciples, for instance. They annoy the Hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. they were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while he was alive, they were about as much use to him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting him down. I like almost anybody in the bible better than the disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. I used to get in quite a few arguments about it, when i was at Whooton School, with this boy that lived down the corridor, Arthur Childs. Old Childs was a quaker and all, and he read the bible all the time. He was a nice kid, and I liked him, but i could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the bible, especially the disciples. He kept telling me that if i didn't like the disciples, then I didn't like Jesus and all. He said because jesus picked the disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew he picked them, but that he picked them at random. I said he didn't have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said i wasn't blaming Jesus or anything it wasn't his fault that he didnt have any time. I remember I asked old Childs if he thought Judas, the one that betrayed Jesus and all, went to Hell after he commited suicide. Childs said certainly. That's exactly where i disagreed with him. I said I'd bet a thousand bucks that Jesus never sent old Judas to hell. I still would, too, if I had a thousand bucks. I think any of the disciples would've sent him to Hell and all - and fast, too- but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it."

"I stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, taking a bath and all. Then I got back in bed. It took me quite a while to get to sleep- i wasn't even tired- but finaly I did. what i really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory."

The sight is dismal; And our affairs from England come too late: The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, to tell him his commandment is fulfill'd — that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead