Bountiful Beckett

Nothing is more real than nothing.
— Democritus, from frontispiece, of I Can't Go On, I'll Go On, Samuel Beckett, "A Selection from His Works," R. W. Seaver (ed.).

The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the objection to express.
— Three Dialogues with George Duthuit (1946), in Ibid.

His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year....
— Samuel Beckett, from Dante and the Lobster, in Ibid., p. 19.

....It took  me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realize that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Guidecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the existence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise. It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it. So a fat lot of help it was when, having put the question to her, I was told they were clients she received in rotation. I could obviously have got up and gone to look through the keyhole. But what can you see, I ask you, through holes the likes of those? So you live by prostitution, I said. We live by prostitution, she said. You couldn't ask them to make less noise? I said, as if I believed her. I added, or a different kind of noise....
— Samuel Beckett, from First Love, in Ibid., pp. 154-155.

....and what prevented the dog from being one of those stray dogs that you pick up and take in your arms, from compassion or because you have long been straying with no other company than the endless roads, sands, shingle, bogs and heather, than this nature answerable to another court, than at long intervals the fellow-convict you long to stop, embrace, suck, suckle and whom you pass by, with hostile eyes, for fear of his familiarities? Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it the time needed for it to love you and you it, then throw it away....
— Samuel Beckett, from Molloy, in Ibid., p. 219.

Boy: Yes Sir.
     He steps back, hesitates, turns and exit running. The light
     suddenly fails. In a moment it is night. The moon rises
     at back, mounts in the sky, stands still, shedding a pale
     light on the scene.
Vladimir: At last! (Estragon gets up and goes towards Vladimir, a boot in each hand. He puts them down at the edge of stage, straightens and contemplates the moon.) What are you doing?
Estragon: Pale for weariness.
Vladimir: Eh?
Estragon: Of climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us.
Vladimir: Your boots, what are you doing with your boots?
Estragon: (turning to look at the boots). I'm leaving them there. (Pause.) Another will come, just as ... as ... as me, but with smaller feet, and they'll make him happy.
Vladimir: But you can't go barefoot!
Estragon: Christ did.
Vladimir: Christ! What has Christ got to do with it? You're not going to compare yourself to Christ!
Estragon: All my life I've compared myself to him.
Vladimir: But where he lived it was warm, it was dry!
Estragon: Yes. And they crucified quick.
                Silence.
Vladimir: We've nothing more to do here.
Estragon: Nor anywhere else.
Vladimir: Ah Gogo, don't go on like that. To-morrow everything will be better.
Estragon: How do you make that out?
Vladimir: Did you not hear what the child said?
Estragon: No.
Vladimir: He said that Godot was sure to come to-morrow....
— Samuel Beckett, from Waiting for Godot, near end of Act I, in Ibid., pp. 424-425.