Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks.
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
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.
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.
All I can say is that I did admire 'The Lives of Others', which I thought was really about something and beautifully done.
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.
The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to.
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.
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.
If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect.
The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.
This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement.
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 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 simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.
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.
Only by the sweat of my own brow. I am a totally working man.
Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.
One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.
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.
Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.
Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.
My first play was 'The Room', written when I was twenty-seven.
I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.
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'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.'
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.
I mean, don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?
There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules.
I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.
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.
One's life has many compartments.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?
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.
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.
Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life.
Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.
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.
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.
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.
Quite often, I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved - equally as often - quite wrong.
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.
Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.
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.
I also found being called Sir rather silly.
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.
