A biography for Harold Pinterhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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 never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.”
“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.”
“The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.”
“Analysis I take to be a scientific procedure. What I do is creative. It doesn't spring from the same part of the mind.”
“Drama happens in big cricket matches. But also in small cricket matches.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I was told that, when 'Betrayal' was being produced by one of the provincial companies in England, the two actors playing those roles actually went into a pub one day and played that scene as if it were really happening to them. The people around them became very uncomfortable.”
“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 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.”
“I've never been able to understand what they mean by 'Pinteresque,'. I'm sure it's indefinable.”
“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 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!”
“The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to.”
“One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.”
“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”
“The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.”
“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.”