Harold Pinter Quotes & Sayings

I no longer feel banished from myself. — Harold Pinter

There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules. — Harold Pinter

I'm not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I'm not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don't see any placards on myself, and I don't carry any banners. — Harold Pinter

How can the unknown merit reverence? — Harold Pinter

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. — Harold Pinter

I'll tell you what I really think about politicians. The other night I watched some politicians on television talking about Vietnam. I wanted very much to burst through the screen with a flame thrower and burn their eyes out and their balls off and then inquire from them how they would assess the action from a political point of view. — Harold Pinter

I believe an international criminal court is very much to be desired. — Harold Pinter

The weasel under the cocktail cabinet. — Harold Pinter

I also found being called Sir rather silly. — Harold Pinter

I could be a bit of a pain in the arse. Since I've come out of my cancer, I must say I intend to be even more of a pain in the arse. — Harold Pinter

I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays. — Harold Pinter

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician. — Harold Pinter

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz. — Harold Pinter

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo. — Harold Pinter

There are places in my heart ... where no living soul ... has ... or can ever ... trespass. — Harold Pinter

You are in no man's land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but remains forever, icy and silent. — Harold Pinter

It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns. — Harold Pinter

I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people. — Harold Pinter

I thought the plays would speak for themselves. But they didn't. — Harold Pinter

EMMA: We're lovers.
ROBERT: Ah, yes. I thought it might be something like that. Something along those lines.
EMMA: When?
ROBERT: What?
EMMA: When did you think?
ROBERT: Yesterday. Only yesterday. When I saw his handwriting on the letter. Before yesterday I was quite ignorant.
EMMA: Ah. (pause) I'm sorry.
ROBERT: Sorry? (silence) How long?
EMMA: Some time.
ROBERT: Yes, but how long exactly?
EMMA: Five years.
ROBERT: Five years? — Harold Pinter

I sometimes wish desperately that I could write like someone else, be someone else. No one particularly. Just if I could put the pen down on paper and suddenly come out in a totally different way. — Harold Pinter

Beckett had an unerring light on things, which I much appreciated. — Harold Pinter

When the storm is over and night falls and the moon is out in all its glory and all you're left with is the rhythm of the sea, of the waves, you know what God intended for the human race, you know what paradise is. — Harold Pinter

I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

What sound was that?
I turn away, into the shaking room.
What was that sound that came in on the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?
It was the breath we took when we first met.
Listen. It is here. — Harold Pinter

I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature. — Harold Pinter

I would never use obscene language in the office. Certainly not. I kept my obscene language for the home, where it belongs. — Harold Pinter

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

I mean, don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past? — Harold Pinter

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years. — Harold Pinter

You wouldn't understand my works. You wouldn't have the faintest idea of what they were about. You wouldn't appreciate the points of reference. You're way behind. All of you. There's no point in sending you my works. You'd be lost. It's nothing to do with a question of intelligence. It's a way of being able to look at the world. It's a question of how far you can operate on things and not in things. I mean it's a question of your capacity to ally the two, to relate the two, to balance the two. To see, to be able to see! I'm the one who can see. That's why I can write my critical works. Might do you good ... have a look at them ... see how certain people can view ... things ... how certain people can maintain ... intellectual equilibrium. Intellectual equilibrium. You're just objects. You just ... move about. I can observe it. I can see what you do. It's the same as I do. But you're lost in it. You won't get me being ... I won't be lost in it. — Harold Pinter

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all. — Harold Pinter

I can't really articulate what I feel, — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

In Cuba I have always understood harsh treatment of dissenting voices as stemming from a "siege situation" imposed upon it from outside. And I believe that to a certain extent that is true. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work. — Harold Pinter

Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

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.( ... )But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost. — Harold Pinter

I believe the US is a truly monstrous force in the world, now off the leash for obvious reasons. — Harold Pinter

Referees are the law. They have a whistle. They blow it. And that whistle is the articulation of God's justice. — Harold Pinter

Listen. You know what it's like when you're in a room with the light on and then suddenly the light goes out? I'll show you. It's like this.
He turns out the light.
BLACKOUT — Harold Pinter

Rationality went down the drain donkey's years ago and hasn't been seen since. — Harold Pinter

The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted ... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do. — Harold Pinter

I know the place. It is true. Everything we do Corrects the space Between death and me And you. — Harold Pinter

JERRY: Look at the way you're looking at me. I can't wait for you. I'm bowled over, I'm totally knocked out, you dazzle me, you jewel, my jewel, I can't ever sleep again, no, listen, it's the truth, I won't walk, I'll be a cripple, I'll descend, I'll diminish, into total paralysis, my life is in your hands, that's what you're banishing me to, a state of catatonia, do you know the state of catatonia? do you? do you? the state of ... where the reigning prince is the prince of emptiness, the prince of absence, the prince of desolation. I love you.
EMMA: My husband is at the other side of that door.
JERRY: Everyone knows. The world knows. It knows. But they'll never know, they'll never know, they're in a different world. I adore you. I'm madly in love with you. I can't believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has ever happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. Your eyes kill me. I'm lost. You're wonderful. — Harold Pinter

Be careful how you talk about God. He's the only God we have. If you let him go he won't come back. He won't even look back over his shoulder. And then what will you do? — Harold Pinter

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember. — Harold Pinter

Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences-I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does. — Harold Pinter

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living. — Harold Pinter

The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay. — Harold Pinter

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of
blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law. — Harold Pinter

The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word. — Harold Pinter

One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness. — Harold Pinter

I can't believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has never happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened. — Harold Pinter

No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal; like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage. — Harold Pinter

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. — Harold Pinter

One's life has many compartments. — Harold Pinter

I saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time. — Harold Pinter

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there? — Harold Pinter

As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays-to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash. — Harold Pinter

EMMA It was never intended to be the same kind of home. Was it? Pause. You didn't ever see it as a home, in any sense, did you? JERRY No, I saw it as a flat . . . you know. EMMA For fucking. JERRY No, for loving. EMMA Well, there's not much of that left, is there? Silence. JERRY I don't think we don't love each other. Pause. EMMA — Harold Pinter

This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement. — Harold Pinter

I've had my fill of these city guttersnipes
all that scavenging scum! They're the sort of people, who, if the gates of heaven opened to them, all they'd feel would be a draught. — Harold Pinter

I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked
in the sense that I find there is an audience. — Harold Pinter

It's very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror. — Harold Pinter

I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks. — Harold Pinter

Isn't it true that every aristocrat wants to die? — Harold Pinter

I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. — Harold Pinter

If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect. — Harold Pinter

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate. — Harold Pinter

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked. — Harold Pinter

Do the structures of language and the structures of reality (by which I mean what actually happens) move along parallel lines? Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is it that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality
to distort what happens
because we fear it? — Harold Pinter

The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them. — Harold Pinter

I think that NATO is itself a war criminal. — Harold Pinter

The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression. — Harold Pinter

Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself. — Harold Pinter

When you lead a life of scholarship you can't be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing. — Harold Pinter

I mean, if a thing works, if a thing is right, respect that, acknowledge it, respect it and hold to it. — Harold Pinter