Harold Pinter Quotes

I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.

No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal; like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion.

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

When the storm is over and night falls and the moon is out in all its glory and all you're left with is the rhythm of the sea, of the waves, you know what God intended for the human race, you know what paradise is.

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.

I suggest that US foreign policy can still be defined as "kiss my ass or I'll kick your head in." But of course it doesn't put it like that. It talks of "low intensity conflict..." What all this adds up to is a disease at the very centre of language, so that language becomes a permanent masquerade, a tapestry of lies.

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

Do the structures of language and the structures of reality (by which I mean what actually happens) move along parallel lines? Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is it that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality -- to distort what happens -- because we fear it?

Referees are the law. They have a whistle. They blow it. And that whistle is the articulation of God's justice.

I'll tell you what I really think about politicians. The other night I watched some politicians on television talking about Vietnam. I wanted very much to burst through the screen with a flame thrower and burn their eyes out and their balls off and then inquire from them how they would assess the action from a political point of view.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.

Don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement.

The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression.

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays-to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash.

I found the offer of a knighthood something that I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights.

I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked--in the sense that I find there is an audience.

Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

Clinton's hands remain incredibly clean, don't they, and Tony Blair's smile remains as wide as ever. I view these guises with profound contempt.

It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.

The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz.

I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales.

I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people.

Be careful how you talk about God. He's the only God we have. If you let him go he won't come back. He won't even look back over his shoulder. And then what will you do?

How can the unknown merit reverence?

I know the place. It is true. Everything we do Corrects the space Between death and me And you.

Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences—I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does.

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

I can't really articulate what I feel.

One's life has many compartments.

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

While The United States is the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it is also the most detested nation that the world has ever known.

The weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

I mean, if a thing works, if a thing is right, respect that, acknowledge it, respect it and hold to it.

I don't intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.