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.
Harold PinterRead
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.
Interpretation
Speech often conceals our true feelings and vulnerabilities, acting as a barrier to authenticity.
In this quote, Harold Pinter suggests that the way we communicate often hides our innermost thoughts and emotions. Speech serves as a protective layer, allowing us to avoid vulnerability, while true silence reveals the raw truth of our existence. The metaphor of speech as a 'smoke screen' indicates that our words can mislead or disguise our true selves, and in genuine silence, we confront our actual state of being.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the challenges of honest communication in relationships.
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.
When all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience. Nothingness - or more accurately NO-THINGNESS - is your original face.
There is no ship now that can bear me hence
Conventional measures of mental ability, such as intelligence tests and scholarship, show some of the very highest records belong to INFP and INFJ types, who relegate thinking to last place or next to last. The preference for thinking appears to have far less intellectual effect than the preference for intuition, even in some technical fields, such as scientific research, where its influence was expected to be most important.
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position.
A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe, a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.
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