"Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?Henry: Not a living soul.Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted."

"Estragon: And if he doesn't come?Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We'll see when the time comes."

"I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments."

"Spend the years of learning squanderingCourage for the years of wanderingThrough a world politely turningFrom the loutishness of learning."

"If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love."

"But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream."

"Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone, too.Vladmir: Then why do you always come crawling back?Estragon: I don't know."

"Estragon: They're too bigVladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day."

"We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?"

"To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was."

"I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation."

"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."

"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."

"A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so."

"Ah earth you old extinguisher."

"And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant."

"In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point."

"Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence."

"But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. He was eloquent. I pointed out that I was not sad. That was a mistake. Your papers, he said, I knew it a moment later. Not at all, I said, not at all. Your papers! he cried. Ah my papers."

"Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen."

"You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the fringe of her long black hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are hidden from view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade."

"Personally of course I regret everything.Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need,not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy,not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust,not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear,not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly.An ordure, from beginning to end."

"You must go on.I can't go on.I'll go on."

"Don't wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto."

"I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning."

"There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket."

"Do we mean love, when we say love?"

"In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness."

"As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places."

"Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all?"

"That's how it is on this bitch of an earth."

"Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that's what I've had to make the best of."

"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet."

"Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned."

"ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go."

"Birth was the death of him."

"Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.We have time to grow old.The air is full of our cries.But habit is a great deadener.At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing.Let him sleep on."

"It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution."

"I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in."

"I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them."

"Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little."

"Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application."

"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

"And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be."

"In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead."

"But we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep on adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or egg collection."

"Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound."

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

"Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her."

"The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said."