Harold Pinter

I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect. I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.

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

I do tend to think that I've written a great deal out of my unconscious because half the time I don't know what a given character is going to say next.

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

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

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

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.

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

The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression.

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

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

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.

I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.

I think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!

There was one man in the Labour government, Robin Cook, whom I had a very high regard for. He had the courage to speak out and to resign over Iraq. He was an admirable man. But resignation over a matter of principle is not a very fashionable thing in our society.

Analysis I take to be a scientific procedure. What I do is creative. It doesn't spring from the same part of the mind.

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.

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.

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.