Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

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Segment 1

[0717] anyone else, which was perhaps a slight exaggeration, for I must have
needed my mother, otherwise why this frenzy of wanting to get to her?
[0718] That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as far as possible.
[0719] For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing
for a man with a passion for truth like mine.

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Segment 2

[0720] And I shall not abandon
this subject, to which I shall probably never have occasion to return,
with such a storm blowing up, without making this curious observation,
that it often happened to me, before I gave up speaking for good, to
think I had said too little when in fact I had said too much and in fact
to have said too little when I thought I had said too much.

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Segment 3

[0721] I mean that
on reflexion, in the long run rather, my verbal profusion turned out to
be dearth and inversely.
[0722] So time sometimes turns the tables. [0723] In other
words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said was never enough and
always too much.
[0724] Yes, I was never silent, whatever I said I was never
silent.
[0725] Divine analysis that conduces thus to knowledge of yourself,
and of your fellow men, if you happen to have any.

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Segment 4

[0726] For to say I needed
no-one was not to say too much, but an infinitesimal part of what I
should have said, could not have said, should never have said.
[0727] Need of
my mother!
[0728] No, there were no words for the want of need in which I was
perishing.
[0729] So that she, I mean Sophie, must have told me the reasons
why I needed her, since I had dared to disagree.

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Segment 5

[0730] And perhaps if I took
the trouble I might find them again, but trouble, thanks very much, some
other time.
[0731] And I've had enough of this boulevard, it must have been a
boulevard, of all these righteous men, these guardians of the peace, all
these feet and hands, stamping, clutching, clenched in vain, these
bawling mouths that never bawl out of season, this sky beginning to drip,
enough of being abroad, trapped, visible.
[0732] Someone was poking the dog,

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