James Joyce: His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.

We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.

I had seen faces in photographs I might have found beautiful had I known even vaguely in what beauty was supposed to consist. And my father's face, on his death-bolster, had seemed to hint at some form of aesthetics relevant to man. But the faces of the living, all grimace and flush, can they be described as objects?

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.

How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.

Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.