Harold Pinter Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Harold Pinter

  Life, Fear, Communication

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  106 Copy quote

• The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

  Harold Pinter

  Memories, Past, Literature

  "Thom Yorke composes music for Harold Pinter play on Broadway" by Ben Beaumont-Thomas, www.theguardian.com. August 12, 2015.

  60 Copy quote

• When the storm is over and night falls and the moon is out in all its glory and all you're left with is the rhythm of the sea, of the waves, you know what God intended for the human race, you know what paradise is.

  Harold Pinter

  Fall, Moon, Night

  Harold Pinter (1993). “Party Time ; And, The New World Order: Two Plays”, p.27, Grove Press

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• There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

  Harold Pinter

  Truth, Memories, May

  Harold Pinter (2013). “Harold Pinter Plays 3: The Homecoming; Old Times; No Man’s Land”, p.219, Faber & Faber

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

  Harold Pinter

  Expression, Theatre

  Harold Pinter (1977). “Complete works”

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• 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.

  Harold Pinter

  Fall, Echoes, Silence

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  61 Copy quote

• Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

  Harold Pinter

  Philosophy, Logic, Known

  'The Homecoming' (1965) act 2

  29 Copy quote

• No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal; like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion.

  Harold Pinter

  Life, Friendship, Passion

  72 Copy quote

• Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.

  Harold Pinter

  Art, Giving, Frozen

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  59 Copy quote

• Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Literature, Life Worth Living

  58 Copy quote

• I suggest that US foreign policy can still be defined as "kiss my ass or I'll kick your head in." But of course it doesn't put it like that. It talks of "low intensity conflict..." What all this adds up to is a disease at the very centre of language, so that language becomes a permanent masquerade, a tapestry of lies.

  Harold Pinter

  Lying, Kissing, Add

  "Oh, Superman". Broadcast for "Opinion" on Channel 4 (May 31, 1990); later quoted in Harold Pinter "Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-2005" (pp. 198-199), 2005.

  48 Copy quote

• There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

  Harold Pinter

  Art, Hands, Challenges

  "Art, Truth & Politics". Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 7, 2005.

  44 Copy quote

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

  Harold Pinter

  Heart, Soul, My Heart

  Harold Pinter (2013). “No Man's Land”, p.60, Faber & Faber

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

  Harold Pinter

  Wise, Thinking, Literature

  44 Copy quote

• Don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

  Harold Pinter

  Past, Years, Earth

  Harold Pinter (2013). “The Homecoming”, p.58, Faber & Faber

  35 Copy quote

• I'll tell you what I really think about politicians. The other night I watched some politicians on television talking about Vietnam. I wanted very much to burst through the screen with a flame thrower and burn their eyes out and their balls off and then inquire from them how they would assess the action from a political point of view.

  Harold Pinter

  Eye, Night, Thinking

  45 Copy quote

• Be careful how you talk about God. He's the only God we have. If you let him go he won't come back. He won't even look back over his shoulder. And then what will you do?

  Harold Pinter

  Looks, Let Him Go, Shoulders

  Harold Pinter (2008). “Ashes to Ashes and Other Plays”, p.15, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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

  Harold Pinter

  Literature, Easy, Propaganda

  "Pinter: I won't be silenced". Interview with Matthew Tempest, www.theguardian.com. August 3, 2001.

  10 Copy quote

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

  Harold Pinter

  Hands, Sometimes, Moments

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  Literature, World, Systematic

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  19 Copy quote

• A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

  Harold Pinter

  Lying, Wind, Choices

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

  47 Copy quote

• Do the structures of language and the structures of reality (by which I mean what actually happens) move along parallel lines? Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is it that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality -- to distort what happens -- because we fear it?

  Harold Pinter

  Moving, Mean, Reality

  46 Copy quote

• One's life has many compartments.

  Harold Pinter

  Interview with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. September 14, 2002.

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• I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Harold Pinter, Mel Gussow (1996). “Conversations with Pinter”, p.20, Grove Press

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• How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

  Harold Pinter

  Knowledge, Numbers, Ignorant

  Harold Pinter (1967). “The Homecoming”, p.52, Grove Press

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