HAROLD PINTER
Ashes to Ashes

But there was a man sitting in front of me, to my right. He was absolutely still throughout the whole film. He never moved, he was rigid, like a body with rigor mortis, he never laughed once, he just sat like a corpse. I moved far away from him, I moved as far away from him as I possibly could.

HAROLD PINTER
No Man’s Land

Experience is a paltry thing. Everyone has it and will tell his tale of it. I leave experience to psychological interpreters, the wetdream world. I myself can do any graph of experience you wish, to suit your taste or mine. Child’s play. The present will not be distorted. I am a poet. I am interested in where I am eternally present and active.

HAROLD PINTER
“I Shall Tear off My Terrible Cap”

I in my straight jacket swung in the sun,
In a hostile pause in a no man’s time.
The spring his green anchor had flung.
Around me only the walking brains,
And the plack of their onelegged dreams
As I hung.

I tell them this—
Only the deaf can hear and the blind understand
The miles I gabble.
Through these my dances of dunce and devil,
It’s only the dumb can speak through the rubble.
Time shall drop his spit in my cup,
With this vicious cut he shall close my trap
And gob me up in a drunkard’s lap.
All spirits shall haunt me and all devils drink me;
O despite their dark drugs and the digs that they rib me,
I’ll tear off my terrible cap.

HAROLD PINTER
No Man’s Land

What a remarkably pleasant room. I feel at peace here. Safe from all danger. But please don’t be alarmed. I shan’t stay long. I never stay long, with others. They do not wish it. And that, for me, is a happy state of affairs. My only security, you see, my true comfort and solace, rests in the confirmation that I elicit from people of all kinds a common and constant level of indifference. It assures me that I am as I think myself to be, that I am fixed, concrete. To show interest in me or, good gracious, anything tending towards a positive liking of me, would cause in me a condition of the acutest alarm. Fortunately, the danger is remote.

HAROLD PINTER
A Slight Ache

Not that I had any difficulty in seeing you, no, no, it was not so much my sight, my sight is excellent—in winter I run about with nothing on but a pair of polo shorts—no, it was not so much any deficiency in my sight as the airs between me and my object—don’t weep—the change of air, the current obtaining in the space between me and my object, the shades they make, the shapes they take, the quivering, the eternal quivering—please stop crying—nothing to do with heat-haze. Sometimes, of course, I would take shelter, shelter to compose myself. Yes, I would seek a tree, a cranny of bushes, erect my canopy and so make shelter. And rest.

HAROLD PINTER
Interview with James Grissom (1997)

This is a great tragedy: There are so many stories to tell, so many stories from which we would gain so much, and there is so little time and so little talent and so little encouragement available to get them told, shared, loved. This is a great tragedy and the story of all of mankind: Trying to get the story told and none of the right words to express it, and no audiences to hear it. It is called, I think, desperation. And then—curtain.

HAROLD PINTER
The Hothouse

I don’t care whether it’s true or not. I don’t like to have a thing repeated and repeated and repeated! Anyone would think I was slow on the uptake. The snow has turned to slush. I heard it. I understand it. That’s enough.

HAROLD PINTER
Party Time

You don’t have to believe anything. You just have to shut up and mind your own business, how many times do I have to tell you? You come to a lovely party like this, all you have to do is shut up and enjoy the hospitality and mind your own fucking business. How many more times do I have to tell you? You keep hearing all these things. You keep hearing all these things spread by pricks about pricks. What’s it got to do with you?

Currently Watching

ACCIDENT
Joseph Losey

UK, 1967

HAROLD PINTER
No Man’s Land

What a remarkably pleasant room. I feel at peace here. Safe from all danger. But please don’t be alarmed. I shan’t stay long. I never stay long, with others. They do not wish it. And that, for me, is a happy state of affairs. My only security, you see, my true comfort and solace, rests in the confirmation that I elicit from people of all kinds a common and constant level of indifference. It assures me that I am as I think myself to be, that I am fixed, concrete. To show interest in me or, good gracious, anything tending towards a positive liking of me, would cause in me a condition of the acutest alarm. Fortunately, the danger is remote.

HAROLD PINTER

Party Time

You don’t have to believe anything. You just have to shut up and mind your own business, how many times do I have to tell you? You come to a lovely party like this, all you have to do is shut up and enjoy the hospitality and mind your own fucking business. How many more times do I have to tell you? You keep hearing all these things. You keep hearing all these things spread by pricks about pricks. What’s it got to do with you?

HAROLD PINTER
The Hothouse

____________________

The moon was behind you, in front of you, all over you, suffusing you, consuming you, you were transparent, translucent, a beacon.

HAROLD PINTER
Moonlight
____________________

FRED
You were writing poems when you were a mere child, isn’t that right?

JAKE
I was writing poems before I could read.

FRED
Listen. I happen to know that you were writing poems before you could speak.

JAKE
Listen! I was writing poems before I was born.

FRED
So you would say you were the real thing?

JAKE
The authentic article.

FRED
Never knowingly undersold.

JAKE
Precisely. 

HAROLD PINTER
Night School

____________________

I’ve always been a lone wolf. The first time I was seduced, I said to myself, Solto, watch your step, mind how you go, go so far but no further. If they want to seduce you, let them seduce you, but marry them? Out of the question.

HAROLD PINTER

Moonlight

____________________

You’re not a bad man. You’re just what we used to call a loudmouth. You can’t help it. It’s your nature. If you only kept your mouth shut more of the time life with you might just be tolerable.

HAROLD PINTER

____________________

Language, under these conditions, is a highly ambiguous commerce. So often, below the words spoken, is the thing known and unspoken. My characters tell me so much and no more, with reference to their experience, their aspirations, their motives, their history. Between my lack of biographical data about them and the ambiguity of what they say there lies a territory which is not only worthy of exploration but which it is compulsory to explore.

You and I, the characters which grow on a page, most of the time we’re inexpressive, giving little away, unreliable, elusive, evasive, obstructive, unwilling. But it’s out of these attributes that a language arises. A language, I repeat, where, underneath what is said, another thing is being said.

HAROLD PINTER
Silence

____________________

Now and again I meet my drinking companion and have a drink with her. She is a friendly woman, quite elderly, quite friendly. But she knows little of me, she could never know much of me, not really, not now. She’s funny. She starts talking sexily to me, in the corner, with our drinks. I laugh.

HAROLD PINTER
Old Times

____________________

What worries me is the thought of your husband rumbling about alone in his enormous villa living hand to mouth on a few hardboiled eggs and unable to speak a damn word of English.

BUTLEY

Harold Pinter
UK, 1974

HAROLD PINTER
The Room
____________________

What are you looking at? You’re blind, aren’t you? So what are you looking at?