Harold Pinter

“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'm always the interrogator. When I was an actor in rep, I always played sinister parts. The directors always said, 'If there's a nasty man about, cast Harold Pinter.'”

“Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.”

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

“I've never been able to understand what they mean by 'Pinteresque,'. I'm sure it's indefinable.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 o...”

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

“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 think that NATO is itself a war criminal.”

“It's such a delicate business, the structure of film, isn't it? What happens if a scene is not there but two minutes later? It's an eternal, never-ending search, actually, which is very exci...”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“I find the whole Blairish idea more and more repugnant every day. 'New Labour': the term itself is so trashy. Kind of ersatz.”

“Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.”

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