Harold Pinter Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I was told that, when 'Betrayal' was being produced by one of the provincial companies in England, the two actors playing those roles actually went into a pub one day and played that scene as if it were really happening to them. The people around them became very uncomfortable.
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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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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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Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.
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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 ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.
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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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I believe his arrest and detention by the international criminal tribunal is unconstitutional, and goes against Yugoslav and international law. They have no right to try him.
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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 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 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 certainly feel sad about the alienation from my son.
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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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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 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.
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Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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The only theatre I ever saw was Shakespeare.