Harold Pinter Quotes

I can't really articulate what I feel.

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

One's life has many compartments.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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'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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.

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.

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

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

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 weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

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.

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.

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

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