Harold Pinter Quotes
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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 ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.
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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 think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!
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This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement.
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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.
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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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There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules.
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All I can say is that I did admire 'The Lives of Others', which I thought was really about something and beautifully done.
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It's such a delicate business, the structure of film, isn't it? What happens if a scene is not there but two minutes later? It's an eternal, never-ending search, actually, which is very exciting. It really is.
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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.
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Analysis I take to be a scientific procedure. What I do is creative. It doesn't spring from the same part of the mind.
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I'm always the interrogator. When I was an actor in rep, I always played sinister parts. The directors always said, 'If there's a nasty man about, cast Harold Pinter.'
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There was one man in the Labour government, Robin Cook, whom I had a very high regard for. He had the courage to speak out and to resign over Iraq. He was an admirable man. But resignation over a matter of principle is not a very fashionable thing in our society.
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My first play was 'The Room', written when I was twenty-seven.
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I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks.
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One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.
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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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Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
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The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.
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If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect.
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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.
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Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it, but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task.