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For after these there would be no more rats, not a rat left, and there were times when Watt almost welcomed this prospect, of being rid of his last rats, at last. It would be lonely, to be sure, at first, and silent, after the gnawing, the scurrying, the little cries.
Samuel Beckett, Watt, Olympia Press, Paris, 1953, p. 84.
TIME: Indeterminate
PLACE: Northern Europe (Ireland?)
Then Watt said, Obscure keys may open simple locks, but simple keys obscure locks never. But Watt had hardly said this when he regretted having done so. But then it was too late, the words were said and could never be forgotten, never undone. But a little later he regretted them less. And a little later he did not regret them at all. And a little later they pleased him again, no less than when they had first sounded, so gentle, so cajoling, in his skull. And then again a little later he regretted them again, most bitterly. And so on. Until there were few degrees of remorse, few of complacency, but more particularly of remorse, with which Watt was not familiar, with reference to these words. And this is perhaps worthy of mention, because it was with Watt a common experience, where words were concerned. And though it sometimes happened that a moment's pensiveness was sufficient to fix his attitude, once and for all, towards words when they sounded, so that he liked them, or disliked them, more or less, with an inalterable like or dislike, yet this did not happen often, no, but thinking now this, now that, he did not in the end know what to think, of the words that had sounded, even when they were plain and modest like the above, of a meaning so evident, and a form so inoffensive, that made no matter, he did not know what to think of them, from one year's end to the next, whether to think poorly of them, or highly of them, or with indifference.
Samuel Beckett, Watt, Olympia Press, Paris, 1953, p. 124-125.
TIME: Indeterminate
PLACE: Northern Europe (Ireland?)
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