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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
SpeechSilenceTruthCommunicationAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the challenges of honest communication in relationships.
More from Harold Pinter
All quotes βAll that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
Harold PinterRead
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.
Harold PinterRead
I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.
Harold PinterRead
It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.
Harold PinterRead
There are places in my heart...where no living soul...has...or can ever...trespass.
Harold PinterRead
Similar quotes
As an adolescent I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.
Charles De GaulleRead
On their deathbed men will speak true, they say.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
Alan WattsRead
No one wants growth, constant expansion, physical swelling. Growth is not a human value; it's a means to the ends of sufficiency and security. Once we have enough, no one wants more, unless it is sold to us as a cheap substitute for something else, something non-material.
Donella MeadowsRead
This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.
Primo LeviRead
Justice and mercy/ Are human dreams, they do not concern the birds nor the fish nor eternal God.
Robinson JeffersRead