Harold Pinter Quotes
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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 always start a play by calling the characters A, B, and C.
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One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.
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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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Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life.
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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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Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
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A character on stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives, is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things.
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A few friends and me used to go and watch Bunuel, Carne, Cocteau... Cocteau and Bunuel were surrealism. And I was very excited by that. 'Un Chien Andalou', especially.
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My father was a tailor. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until seven at night. At least when he got home, my mother always cooked him a very good dinner. Lots of potatoes, I remember; he used to knock them down like a dose of salts. He needed it, after a 12-hour day.
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I used to get up at five in the morning and play cricket.
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I don't idealise women. I enjoy them. I have been married to two of the most independent women it is possible to think of.
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No one wanted me to be a conscientious objector. My parents certainly didn't want it. My teacher and mentor, Joe Brearley, didn't want it. My friends didn't want it. I was alone.
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Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.
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Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.
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A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work.
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I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.
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It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.
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I find the whole Blairish idea more and more repugnant every day. 'New Labour': the term itself is so trashy. Kind of ersatz.
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I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect. I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.
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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.
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I left school at sixteen - I was fed up and restless. The only thing that interested me at school was English language and literature, but I didn't have Latin, and so couldn't go on to university. So I went to a few drama schools, not studying seriously; I was mostly in love at the time and tied up with that.
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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.
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Each play was, for me, 'a different kind of failure.' And that fact, I suppose, sent me on to write the next one. (15)