Harold Pinter Quotes
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I wrote 'The Room', 'The Birthday Party', and 'The Dumb Waiter' in 1957, I was acting all the time in a repertory company, doing all kinds of jobs, traveling to Bournemouth and Torquay and Birmingham.
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I mean, don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?
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All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
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The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.
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The only theatre I ever saw was Shakespeare.
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I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?
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As far as I'm concerned, 'The Caretaker' is funny up to a point. Beyond that, it ceases to be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it.
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I believe an international criminal court is very much to be desired.
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One should also remember that the U.S. is the biggest exporter of torture weapons in the world, though the U.K. is not far behind in the league table. We never stopped, even under Robin Cook's supposedly ethical foreign policy.
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The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay.
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I certainly feel sad about the alienation from my son.
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Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice.
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I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.
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George W. Bush is always protesting that he has the fate of the world in mind and bangs on about the 'freedom-loving peoples' he's seeking to protect. I'd love to meet a freedom-hating people.
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I've never been able to understand what they mean by 'Pinteresque,'. I'm sure it's indefinable.
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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.
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I am absolutely not saying that Milosevic might not be responsible for all sorts of atrocities, but I believe that what's been left out of public debate and the press is that there was a civil war going on there.
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I do tend to think that I've written a great deal out of my unconscious because half the time I don't know what a given character is going to say next.
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A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work.
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Praise the Lord for all good things. We blew their balls into shards of dust,Into shards of fucking dust. We did it. Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
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It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.
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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.
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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.