Harold Pinter Quotes

"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
(Related: Earth, Forget, Old, Past, Years)

"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
(Related: God, Sex, Cricket, Earth)

"I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Country, Responsibility)

"I think that NATO is itself a war criminal."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: War)

"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
(Related: War, London, World, World war)

"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
(Related: Court, Respect)

"Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Attitude, Iraq, Rest, Symbol, World)

"It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Being)

"It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Work, Dissent, Propaganda)

"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
(Related: Government)

"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
(Related: Intelligence, Right)

"Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Life, Living, Worth, Writing)

"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
(Related: Cancer, Pain)

"I believe an international criminal court is very much to be desired."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Court)

"A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Work)

"All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Americans, Destruction)

"Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Government, Press)

"Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?"
- 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
(Related: Cancer)

"Beckett had an unerring light on things, which I much appreciated."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Light)

"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
(Related: Contempt, Smile)

"I also found being called Sir rather silly."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Being, Silly)

"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
(Related: Man, Writer)

"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
(Related: Change, Word)

"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
(Related: Birthday, Party, Play)

"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
(Related: Nation, states, United, World)

"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
(Related: Life, Politics, Force, Theatre, Tradition)

"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
(Related: Absence, America, Court, states, United, World)

"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

"The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Past)

"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
(Related: World)

"The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Work, Thought, Country, Years)

"One's life has many compartments."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Life)

"One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Speech)

"One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all."
- 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
(Related: Love, Words, Years)

"There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Rules)