Harold Pinter Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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