Harold Pinter Quotations

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

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 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.

I mean, 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.

There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.

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

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

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.

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.

I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks.

I could be a bit of a pain in the arse. Since I've come out of my cancer, I must say I intend to be even more of a pain in the arse.

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

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.

Beckett had an unerring light on things, which I much appreciated.

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

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

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.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

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

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.

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.

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 think that NATO is itself a war criminal.

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

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.

There's a tradition in British intellectual life of mocking any non-political force that gets involved in politics, especially within the sphere of the arts and the theatre.

There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules.

A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work.

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

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

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

The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay.

I believe an international criminal court is very much to be desired.

If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect.

The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.

Mr. Bush and his gang do know what they're doing, and Blair, unless he really is the deluded idiot he often appears to be, also knows what they're doing.

I feel quite overwhelmed. I had absolutely no idea.

I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world.

I think it's enough for me. I've found other forms now.

It is indeed, ... But to get the oil from the Caspian Sea into the hands of the West you can't use buckets. You need pipelines and those pipelines have to be installed and protected. The oil reserves in the Caspian Sea are vast. The pipelines mean that security in the Balkans is of concrete economic and strategic importance.

I will continue to write what I write until the day I die.

I think the world is going down the drain if we're not very careful, ... It's a very dangerous world as we all know, and I don't think this country (Britain) is helping at all.

I think the world is going down the drain if we're not very careful,

restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles.

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

We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority.

As far as I'm concerned, 'The Caretaker' is funny, up to a point. Beyond that point, it ceases to be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it.

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable.

It was something I did not expect at all at any time, ... I wonder, I wonder.

I have no idea why they gave me the award, ... I respect their judgment. I am very grateful.

I have written 29 plays and I think that's really enough,

In Cuba I have always understood harsh treatment of dissenting voices as stemming from a "siege situation" imposed upon it from outside. And I believe that to a certain extent that is true.

I saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time.

Isn't it true that every aristocrat wants to die?

How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

I've had my fill of these city guttersnipes--all that scavenging scum! They're the sort of people, who, if the gates of heaven opened to them, all they'd feel would be a draught.

Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.

I thought the plays would speak for themselves. But they didn't.

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

When you lead a life of scholarship you can't be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing.

The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted.... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do.

How can the unknown merit reverence?

I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.

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

There are places in my heart...where no living soul...has...or can ever...trespass.

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

Rationality went down the drain donkey's years ago and hasn't been seen since.

I believe the US is a truly monstrous force in the world, now off the leash for obvious reasons.

I'm not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I'm not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don't see any placards on myself, and I don't carry any banners.

I no longer feel banished from myself.

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

I can't really articulate what I feel,

One's life has many compartments.

It’s very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.

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?

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

I sometimes wish desperately that I could write like someone else, be someone else. No one particularly. Just if I could put the pen down on paper and suddenly come out in a totally different way.

I would never use obscene language in the office. Certainly not. I kept my obscene language for the home, where it belongs.

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

The weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.