Harold Pinter

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

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

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

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

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.

I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.

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.

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

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.

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.

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.'