Harold Pinter Quotes - Page 2

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

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

How can the unknown merit reverence?

How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I can't really articulate what I feel.

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.

It’s very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.

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.