Throughout the 1960s and 1970s devoted Beckett readers greeted each successively shorter volume from the master with a mixture of awe and apprehensiveness; it was like watching a great mathematician wielding an infinitesimal calculus, his equations approaching nearer and still nearer to the null point.

If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?

I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

The white May blossom swooned slowly into the open mouth of the grave.

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.