Quotes from Harold Pinter

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.

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it, but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

One's life has many compartments.

If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

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 saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time.

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

My father was a tailor. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until seven at night. At least when he got home, my mother always cooked him a very good dinner. Lots of potatoes, I remember; he used to knock them down like a dose of salts. He needed it, after a 12-hour day.

Only by the sweat of my own brow. I am a totally working man.

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.

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.

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.