When Samuel Beckett lived briefly in Berlin, his regular haunt was a restaurant called the Giraffe.
While sitting there one day after finishing his meal, he was asked by his waiter “Why is there no expression of hope in your work?” After a trademark Beckett silence, he picked up a crumb of bread from the tablecloth, stared at it, then replied – paraphrasing Dante –“ I would have written over the Gates of Heaven what is said to be written over Hell – abandon all hope who enter here”.
Beckett then dropped the bread crumb and added “That`s what I think of hope”