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?

In my books you have to concentrate, but I work hard to make it that, when you do, the rewards are quite high.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, you’ll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. You’ll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, you’ll weep for nothing, pine for what’s not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you.

...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.