Finally, what is unique about Bernhard, unlike Beckett (with whom he is often compared), is that Bernhard is talkative; he does not fall into the slapstick of silence that Beckett often uses. There is a passage in "Gathering Evidence" in which Bernhard has lunch with a rediscovered acquaintance with whom he worked in the grocery and who now operates a pneumatic drill:
"We exchanged any number of memories. Then, when we had ended our conversation, he said So long and Nothing matters, just as if I had said it to myself. What characterizes me today is my indifference, aware as I am that there are no differences in value among the things that have been or are now or will be in the future. There is no scale of value--that is all done with. Human beings are as they are and cannot be changed, any more than the objects they have made in the past or make now or will make in the future. Nature knows no scale of values. It knows only human beings, with all their weaknesses, all their physical and spiritual dirt, every day that dawns. It is a matter of indifference whether one of them despairs as he stands over his pneumatic drill or another as he sits at his typewriter. Only theories can cripple us--that is obvious--all the philosophies and systems of thought which block the way to clarity with their unusable insights. We have been through almost everything and what is still to come will bring us no surprises because every eventuality has been taken into account."
