Endgame Quotes

CLOV: [fixed gaze, tonelessly] Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.

[Pause.]

Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.

HAMM: […] Can there be misery—

[he yawns]

—loftier than mine? No doubt. Formerly. But now?

[Pause.]

My father?

[Pause.]

My mother?

[Pause.]

My…dog?

[Pause.]

Oh I am willing to believe they suffer as much as such creatures can suffer. But does that mean their sufferings equal mine? No doubt.

HAMM: […] Enough, it’s time it ended, in the shelter too.

[Pause.]

And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to…to end. Yes, there it is, it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to—

[he yawns]

—to end.

CLOV: Yes!

[Pause.]

Of what?

HAMM: Of this…this…thing.

CLOV: I always had.

[Pause.]

Not you?

HAMM: [gloomily] Then there’s no reason for it to change.

HAMM: […] Why do you stay with me?

CLOV: Why do you keep me?

HAMM: There’s no one else.

CLOV: There’s nowhere else.

CLOV: […] I’ll leave you, I have things to do.

HAMM: In your kitchen?

CLOV: Yes.

HAMM: What, I’d like to know.

CLOV: I look at the wall.

HAMM: The wall! And what do you see on your wall? Mene, mene? Naked bodies?

CLOV: I see my light dying.

HAMM: [anguished] What’s happening, what’s happening?

CLOV: Something is taking its course.

NELL: Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more.

CLOV: […] [He gets down, picks up the telescope, turns it on auditorium.] I see…a multitude…in transports…of joy.

[Pause.]

That’s what I call a magnifier.

HAMM: We’re not beginning to…to…meaning something?

CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!

[Brief laugh.]

Ah that’s a good one!

HAMM: I wonder.

[Pause.]

Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn’t he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough.

[Voice of rational being.]

Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they’re at!

[Clov starts, drops the telescope and begins to scratch his belly with both hands. Normal voice.]

And without going so far as that, we ourselves…

[with emotion]

…we ourselves…at certain moments…

HAMM: I once knew a madman who thought the end of the world had come. He was a painter—and engraver. I had a great fondness for him. I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I’d take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look! There! All that rising com! And there! Look! The sails of the herring fleet! All that loveliness!

[Pause.]

He’d snatch away his hand and go back into his comer. Appalled. All he had seen was ashes.

[Pause.]

He alone had been spared.

[Pause.]

Forgotten.

[Pause.]

It appears the case is…was not so…so unusual.

HAMM: […] Use your head, can’t you, use your head, you’re on earth, there’s no cure for that!

[…]

But what in God’s name do you imagine? That the earth will awake in spring? That the rivers and seas will run with fish again? That there’s manna in heaven still for imbeciles like you?

NAGG: […] Yes, I hope I’ll live till then, to hear you calling me like when you were a tiny boy, and were frightened, in the dark, and I was your only hope.

HAMM: […] Did you never hear an aside before?

[Pause.]

I’m warming up for my last soliloquy.

HAMM: […] Moments for nothing, now as always, time was never and time is over, reckoning closed and story ended.