Harold Pinter Quotes - Page 3

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

There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules.

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.

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

I no longer feel banished from myself.

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

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

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

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.

The weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

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

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

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.