Excerpt from the novella Company in Nohow On:

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 into 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.

 

From the poem Dieppe, in Collected Poems in English and French:

… what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng of hiddenness

...

I would like my love to die
and the rain to be raining on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning her who thought she loved me.

 

From Worstward Ho:

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

 

Watch Samuel Beckett's Ohio Impromptu. Directed by Charles Sturridge with Jeremy Irons. From Beckett on Film. 

... In his dreams he had been warned against this change, seen the dear face and heard the unspoken words. "Stay, where we were so long alone together. My shade will comfort you."

Could he not now turn back, acknowledge his error, and return to where they were once so long alone together. Alone together, so much shared. No. What he had done alone could not be undone. Nothing he'd ever done alone could ever be undone, by him alone….

 

Books by/on Beckett at Powell's Books.