I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.

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

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.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.

I dont know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, its very difficult to find.

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.