"He has the reputation of being austere and hermetic, but those who have met him always attest to the mildness of courtesy of the man. On his face, though, you see evidence that must have wrestled for every second of its waking life with the cruelty, crassness and barbarity of mankind."
      —Edna O’Brien, from the Sunday Times Magazine, 6 April 1986
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), one of the most important writers in twentieth-century literature and drama, was born in Foxrock, Ireland, and attended Trinity University in Dublin. Beckett's literary output included novels, stories, poems, and plays, including Waiting for Godot, widely considered one of existentialism's founding texts. In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and commended for having "transformed the destitution of man into his exaltation."