Harold Pinter Quotes (63 Quotes)

I believe one fringe company is currently staging The Lover.

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

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.

And in a sense I haven't looked back since - I just kept writing away really.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

The planned attack on Iraq is a pre-meditated attack of mass murder. Resistance is embodied today in this massive gathering and the word I want to direct to Tony Blair is -- resign, resign, resign.

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.

I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.

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

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

One's life has many compartments.

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

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

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.

find our garden in flames.

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

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

The general thrust these days is Oh, come on, it's all in the past, nobody's interested any more, it didn't work, everyone knows what the Americans are like, but stop being naive, this is the world, there's nothing to be done about it and anyway fu

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

Asked what his plays are about- The weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

a fundamental decency in the country itself.

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.