Molloy Quotes by Samuel Beckett (2025)

“Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. ”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy (Palabra en el tiempo / Word in the Time)

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“That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as much as possible. For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“What was God doing with himself before the creation?”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“Sometimes I went and looked at my grave. The stone was up already. It was a simple Latin cross, white. I wanted to have my name put on it, with the here lies and the date of my birth. Then all it would have wanted was the date of my death. They would not let me. Sometimes I smiled, as if I were dead already.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“I am still alive then. That may come in useful.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“And what I have, what I am, is enough, was always enough for me, and as far as my dear little sweet little future is concerned I have no qualms, I have a good time coming.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“كان يجب أن أقول ذلك منذ زمن ،إني أكتب عن ذاتي بالقلم نفسه وفي الكراسة عينها، ولكن لم أعد أنا فأنا شخص آخر بدأ للتو حياته !”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“But in the end I understood this language. I understood it, I understand it, all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters. It told me to write the report. Does this mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know. I shall learn. Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that, and I'm not sure of it.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“And in winter, under my greatcoat, I wrapped myself in swathes of newspaper, and did not shed them until the earth awoke, for good, in April. The Times Literary Supplement was admirably adapted to this purpose, of a neverfailing toughness and impermeability. Even farts made no impression on it. I can't help it, gas escapes from my fundament on the least pretext, it's hard not to mention it now and then, however great my distaste. One day I counted them. Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an hour. After all it's not excessive. Four farts every fifteen minutes. It's nothing. Not even one fart every four minutes. It's unbelievable. Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never have mentioned it.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think…Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“For I shall be far away, before these lines are read, in a place where no one will dream of coming to look for me.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“There I am then back in the saddle, in my numbed heart a prick of misgiving, like one dying of cancer obliged to consult his dentist.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“I stopped being half-witted and became sly whenever I took the trouble.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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“But it is useless to dwell on this period of my life. If I go on long enough calling that my life I'll end up by believing it.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

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