Harold Pinter Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Literature, Life Worth Living

• As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays-to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash.

  Harold Pinter

  Running, Dog, Fall

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. December 26, 2008.

• I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Harold Pinter, Mel Gussow (1996). “Conversations with Pinter”, p.20, Grove Press

• 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.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Independent, Boys

  "Pinter: I won't be silenced". Interview with Matthew Tempest, www.theguardian.com. August 3, 2001.

• I sometimes wish desperately that I could write like someone else, be someone else. No one particularly. Just if I could put the pen down on paper and suddenly come out in a totally different way.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Wish, Different

  Harold Pinter, Mel Gussow (1996). “Conversations with Pinter”, p.24, Grove Press

• I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked--in the sense that I find there is an audience.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Thinking, Mind

  Harold Pinter (1977). “Plays [of] Harold Pinter”, Methuen

• The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted.... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Character, Doors

• Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences—I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does.

  Harold Pinter

  Mistake, Writing, Night

• I'm not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I'm not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don't see any placards on myself, and I don't carry any banners.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Usual, Want

  Harold Pinter (1977). “Plays: two”

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