Harold Pinter Quotes

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.

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

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.

One`s life has many compartments.

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.

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

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.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

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

I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.

It`s so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I mean, don`t forget the earth`s about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I really believe that Clinton and Blair should be arraigned as war criminals. They justified Serbia by talking about humanitarian intervention. And that kind of crap I think we`ve had enough of.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

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

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

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

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

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

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