Harold Pinter Quotes
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Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
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Quite often, I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved - equally as often - quite wrong.
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I also found being called Sir rather silly.
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I always start a play by calling the characters A, B, and C.
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I used to get up at five in the morning and play cricket.
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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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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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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 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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A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work.
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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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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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Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life.
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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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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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The whole brunt of the media and the government is to encourage people to be highly competitive and totally selfish and uncaring of others.
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Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.
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Things like Abu Ghraib and even Guantanamo are not new things: there are many precedents.
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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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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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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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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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Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.