[PW] ? Beckett quote question, and attack on taciturn quoters

[Solomons1pal at aol.com]

Colleagues,
 
   We all know that Samuel Beckett said "Words are all we have";  a dozen or 
more Web sites assure us he did.  But not one will tell us just  where and 
when he uttered those words.  Can any Wombat tell me?
 
   And I would like to take this opportunity to call down  hellfire and 
torment on anyone who offers a notable quotation without specifying  its exact 
source.  I do so even though I'm thereby condemning one of my  favorite writers, 
W. H. Auden.  He and Louis Kronenberger, in  1962, published The Viking Book of 
Aphorisms, which list hundreds  of striking remarks, but without sources.  I 
have tried for years to  find the sources of some of them, and have paid 
researchers substantial sums to  help, but some of them continue to elude me.  The 
thought of how easy it  would have been for Auden & Kronenberger to note, 
perhaps in small  print in an appendix, their sources makes me grind my teeth.  
It's ttoo  late to punish them, but we should be savage toward anyone who hides  
information that would be very easy for them to record, and damned hard for  
anyone else to recover.
 
                    Mark  Halpern (_markhalpern at iname.com_ 
(mailto:markhalpern at iname.com) )