Favorite Samuel Beckett Quote

I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, "It’s a lie!" So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.

—Samuel Beckett, at 74 (interviewed by Lawrence Shainberg for The Paris Review, 1981)