Harold Pinter

My first play was 'The Room', written when I was twenty-seven.

All I can say is that I did admire 'The Lives of Others', which I thought was really about something and beautifully done.

A few friends and me used to go and watch Bunuel, Carne, Cocteau... Cocteau and Bunuel were surrealism. And I was very excited by that. 'Un Chien Andalou', especially.

The only theatre I ever saw was Shakespeare.

Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life.

I used to get up at five in the morning and play cricket.

I think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!

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

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

I left school at sixteen - I was fed up and restless. The only thing that interested me at school was English language and literature, but I didn't have Latin, and so couldn't go on to university. So I went to a few drama schools, not studying seriously; I was mostly in love at the time and tied up with that.

Quite often, I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved - equally as often - quite wrong.

George W. Bush is always protesting that he has the fate of the world in mind and bangs on about the 'freedom-loving peoples' he's seeking to protect. I'd love to meet a freedom-hating people.

It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.

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.

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

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.

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.

There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules.

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.

The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay.

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

I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.

As far as I'm concerned, 'The Caretaker' is funny up to a point. Beyond that, it ceases to be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it.

I'm well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being 'enigmatic, taciturn, prickly, explosive and forbidding'. Well, I have my moods like anyone else; I won't deny it.

A character on stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives, is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things.

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

You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.

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 exciting. It really is.

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.

The whole brunt of the media and the government is to encourage people to be highly competitive and totally selfish and uncaring of others.

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.'

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.

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?

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 over a matter of principle is not a very fashionable thing in our society.

Things like Abu Ghraib and even Guantanamo are not new things: there are many precedents.

I don't idealise women. I enjoy them. I have been married to two of the most independent women it is possible to think of.

I certainly feel sad about the alienation from my son.

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

I am absolutely not saying that Milosevic might not be responsible for all sorts of atrocities, but I believe that what's been left out of public debate and the press is that there was a civil war going on there.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B, and C.

All I'm saying is that there are many different kinds of political theatre and many plays I greatly admire: 'Antigone,' 'Mother Courage,' 'All My Sons.' But, if I tackle a political theme, I have to do it in my own way.

One should also remember that the U.S. is the biggest exporter of torture weapons in the world, though the U.K. is not far behind in the league table. We never stopped, even under Robin Cook's supposedly ethical foreign policy.

No one wanted me to be a conscientious objector. My parents certainly didn't want it. My teacher and mentor, Joe Brearley, didn't want it. My friends didn't want it. I was alone.

The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to.

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.

I also found being called Sir rather silly.

Drama happens in big cricket matches. But also in small cricket matches.

I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks.

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