Top 91 Pinter Quotes
#1. Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as 'Godspell' - I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did 'Elm Street' - I'd probably be on a psychiatrist's couch saying: 'Freddy ruined me.' But I'd already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre.
Robert Englund
#2. I've always used my hair for whatever it is needed for. I had it an inch long and jet black for a Pinter play I did. Changes you completely.
Joanna Lumley
#3. Talk to each other. Never go to bed when you're angry with each other. Lady Antonia Frasier who was married to Harold Pinter said they never went to bed on an argument.
Elton John
#4. So the first time I ever came into contact with O'Toole was at one of these very gatherings. I remember it well because I'd just punched Harold Pinter down a flight of stairs. Oh yes, I'm afraid so. No long dramatic pauses this time, Harold; he got one right on the side of the jaw. Wham!
Brian Blessed
#5. Why would you think there was anything more between me and Mr. Pinter?
Because you blush when his name is mentioned. Because he follows you with his eyes. Because I do not know what to make of him, and that worries me.
Sabrina Jeffries
#6. I've always liked texts that you immediately understand. I suppose the playwrights who really speak to me are Edward Bond, Joe Orton and Harold Pinter. I've been in six different Pinter productions - I love the clarity of his language. He has this way of using words - there's a thrill to them.
Kenneth Cranham
#7. In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
Tom Stoppard
#8. Most of my influences from outside the commerical strange fiction genre came in with university, discovering James Joyce and Wallace Stevens, Blake and Yeats, Pinter and Borges. And meanwhile within those genres I was discovering Gibson and Shepard, Jeter and Powers, Lovecraft and Peake.
Hal Duncan
#9. Perhaps everything was just as it appeared. Though the girl seemed to be up to something suspicious, it didn't seem to involve any deep feelings for Mr. Pinter.
Now if only she could be as sure about Mr. Pinter's feelings for Celia ...
Sabrina Jeffries
#10. To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your "Core Attachments," means apologizing for your very existence.
Walter Kirn
#11. There are not many intellectuals left of Harold Pinter's stature who dare raise their voices - and with such force - against the menace of U.S. and the unrestricted use of its power. Pinter's voice is an unceasing thunder.
Gioconda Belli
#12. God makes something special and unique about each person that sets them apart from every other person, and to me that's is what artistry is about, whether you are a plumber, a pinter, a musician whatever it is that is unique about you that is translated into your art.
Bubba Sparxxx
#13. Writers can get very angry when an actor says, "I don't know, I don't feel very comfortable with this line." Sometimes though, you're working with a writer for whom that is simply not apt - like Harold Pinter.
Helen Mirren
#14. There is a temptation for an actor to editorialize what they're doing. And you can't do that with Pinter. It's almost like a musical score. His lines are so specific, but they can mean different things to different people, like an alternating current.
Peter Riegert
#15. You may find this hard to believe, Mr. Pinter," she went on defensively, "but some men enjoy my company. They consider me easy to talk to."
A ghost of a smile touched his handsome face. "You're right. I do find that hard to believe."
Arrogant wretch.
-Jackson and Celia
Sabrina Jeffries
#16. For me, poetry is the colour of Elizabeth Taylor's eyes, or the pauses in Pinter's plays - only the pauses, not the words.
Roger Lewis
#17. There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens.
Dylan Moran
#18. I know the place. It is true. Everything we do Corrects the space Between death and me And you.
Harold Pinter
#19. 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
#21. 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.
Harold Pinter
#22. I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.
Harold Pinter
#23. Listen. You know what it's like when you're in a room with the light on and then suddenly the light goes out? I'll show you. It's like this.
He turns out the light.
BLACKOUT
Harold Pinter
#24. 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.
Harold Pinter
#25. When you lead a life of scholarship you can't be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing.
Harold Pinter
#26. I mean, don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?
Harold Pinter
#27. I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks.
Harold Pinter
#28. There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.
Harold Pinter
#29. Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.
Harold Pinter
#30. 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.
Harold Pinter
#31. I would never use obscene language in the office. Certainly not. I kept my obscene language for the home, where it belongs.
Harold Pinter
#32. 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
#33. I thought the plays would speak for themselves. But they didn't.
Harold Pinter
#34. I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked
in the sense that I find there is an audience.
Harold Pinter
#36. I've had my fill of these city guttersnipes
all that scavenging scum! They're the sort of people, who, if the gates of heaven opened to them, all they'd feel would be a draught.
Harold Pinter
#37. I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales.
Harold Pinter
#38. Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.
Harold Pinter
#39. 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
#40. I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.
Harold Pinter
#41. I don't intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.
Harold Pinter
#42. One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.
Harold Pinter
#43. Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
Harold Pinter
#44. I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz.
Harold Pinter
#45. 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
#46. Isn't it true that every aristocrat wants to die?
Harold Pinter
#47. A short piece of work means as much to me as a long piece of work.
Harold Pinter
#48. 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
#50. The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay.
Harold Pinter
#51. This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement.
Harold Pinter
#52. Beckett had an unerring light on things, which I much appreciated.
Harold Pinter
#54. 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
#55. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.
Harold Pinter
#56. 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.
Harold Pinter
#57. Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.
Harold Pinter
#58. The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of
blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law.
Harold Pinter
#59. I believe an international criminal court is very much to be desired.
Harold Pinter
#60. I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.
Harold Pinter
#61. It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.
Harold Pinter
#63. Referees are the law. They have a whistle. They blow it. And that whistle is the articulation of God's justice.
Harold Pinter
#64. The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.
Harold Pinter
#66. My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.
Harold Pinter
#68. Clinton's hands remain incredibly clean, don't they, and Tony Blair's smile remains as wide as ever. I view these guises with profound contempt.
Harold Pinter
#69. 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
#70. It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.
Harold Pinter
#71. It's very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.
Harold Pinter
#72. I can't believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has never happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened.
Harold Pinter
#73. In Cuba I have always understood harsh treatment of dissenting voices as stemming from a "siege situation" imposed upon it from outside. And I believe that to a certain extent that is true.
Harold Pinter
#74. I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.
Harold Pinter
#75. Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.
Harold Pinter
#76. Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
Harold Pinter
#77. If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect.
Harold Pinter
#78. I'm not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I'm not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don't see any placards on myself, and I don't carry any banners.
Harold Pinter
#79. Rationality went down the drain donkey's years ago and hasn't been seen since.
Harold Pinter
#80. There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules.
Harold Pinter
#81. All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
Harold Pinter
#82. I saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time.
Harold Pinter
#83. I sometimes wish desperately that I could write like someone else, be someone else. No one particularly. Just if I could put the pen down on paper and suddenly come out in a totally different way.
Harold Pinter
#84. You are in no man's land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but remains forever, icy and silent.
Harold Pinter
#85. There are places in my heart ... where no living soul ... has ... or can ever ... trespass.
Harold Pinter
#86. I mean, if a thing works, if a thing is right, respect that, acknowledge it, respect it and hold to it.
Harold Pinter
#87. While The United States is the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it is also the most detested nation that the world has ever known.
Harold Pinter
#88. I believe the US is a truly monstrous force in the world, now off the leash for obvious reasons.
Harold Pinter
#89. The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.
Harold Pinter
#90. The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression.
Harold Pinter
#91. 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.
Harold Pinter
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