184 Quotes by Harold Pinter

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.

The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lies. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

I feel a great affinity to his way of thinking. That's why I wanted to work with him. He is a composer of words and I am a composer of music, but we have a lot in common.

I believe one fringe company is currently staging The Lover.

And in a sense I haven't looked back since - I just kept writing away really.

The general thrust these days is: "Oh, come on, it's all in the past, nobody's interested any more, it didn't work, everyone knows what the Americans are like, but stop being naive, this is the world, there's nothing to be done about it and anyway fu

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

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.

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.