Harold Pinter Quotes

One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.

I know the place I know the place. It is true. Everything we do Corrects the space Between death and me And you.

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 think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.

It’s very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.

I can't really articulate what I feel,

There are places in my heart...where no living soul...has...or can ever...trespass.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

When you lead a life of scholarship you can't be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

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

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

I'll tell you what I really think about politicians. The other night I watched some politicians on television talking about Vietnam. I wanted very much to burst through the screen with a flame thrower and burn their eyes out and their balls off and then inquire from them how they would assess the action from a political point of view.

Listen. You know what it's like when you're in a room with the light on and then suddenly the light goes out? I'll show you. It's like this." He turns out the light. BLACKOUT

What sound was that? I turn away, into the shaking room. What was that sound that came in on the dark? What is this maze of light it leaves us in? What is this stance we take, To turn away and then turn back? What did we hear? It was the breath we took when we first met. Listen. It is here.

JERRY: Look at the way you're looking at me. I can't wait for you. I'm bowled over, I'm totally knocked out, you dazzle me, you jewel, my jewel, I can't ever sleep again, no, listen, it's the truth, I won't walk, I'll be a cripple, I'll descend, I'll diminish, into total paralysis, my life is in your hands, that's what you're banishing me to, a state of catatonia, do you know the state of catatonia? do you? do you? the state of...where the reigning prince is the prince of emptiness, the prince of absence, the prince of desolation. I love you. EMMA: My husband is at the other side of that door. JERRY: Everyone knows. The world knows. It knows. But they'll never know, they'll never know, they're in a different world. I adore you. I'm madly in love with you. I can't believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has ever happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. Your eyes kill me. I'm lost. You're wonderful.

You wouldn't understand my works. You wouldn't have the faintest idea of what they were about. You wouldn't appreciate the points of reference. You're way behind. All of you. There's no point in sending you my works. You'd be lost. It's nothing to do with a question of intelligence. It's a way of being able to look at the world. It's a question of how far you can operate on things and not in things. I mean it's a question of your capacity to ally the two, to relate the two, to balance the two. To see, to be able to see! I'm the one who can see. That's why I can write my critical works. Might do you good...have a look at them...see how certain people can view...things...how certain people can maintain...intellectual equilibrium. Intellectual equilibrium. You're just objects. You just...move about. I can observe it. I can see what you do. It's the same as I do. But you're lost in it. You won't get me being...I won't be lost in it.

إنني أكره البراندي .. له طعم الأدب الحديث البغيض

But death permits you To arrange your hours While he sucks the honey From your lovely flowers

what are you but a corpse waiting to be washed?

You are in no man's land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but remains forever, icy and silent.

Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!

I can’t believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has never happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened.

The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lies. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

هناك أشياء يستطيع الإنسان أن يتذكرها ولو أنها لم تحدث إطلاقا. هناك أمور أتذكرها ربما لم تحدث أبدا، لكن عندما أسترجعها تحتل مكانا في خيالي.

As it is?

If you have only one of something you can’t say it’s the best of anything.

RUTH: If you take the glass…I’ll take you.

EMMA: We’re lovers. ROBERT: Ah, yes. I thought it might be something like that. Something along those lines. EMMA: When? ROBERT: What? EMMA: When did you think? ROBERT: Yesterday. Only yesterday. When I saw his handwriting on the letter. Before yesterday I was quite ignorant. EMMA: Ah. (pause) I’m sorry. ROBERT: Sorry? (silence) How long? EMMA: Some time. ROBERT: Yes, but how long exactly? EMMA: Five years. ROBERT: Five years?

JERRY: I was best man at your wedding. I saw you in white. I watched you glide by in white. EMMA: I wasn’t in white. JERRY: You know what should have happened? EMMA: What? JERRY: I should have had you, in your white, before the wedding. I should have blackened you, in your white wedding dress, blackened you in your bridal dress, before ushering you into your wedding, as your best man.

So the first time I ever came into contact with O’Toole was at one of these very gatherings. I remember it well because I’d just punched Harold Pinter down a flight of stairs. Oh yes, I’m afraid so. No long dramatic pauses this time, Harold; he got one right on the side of the jaw. Wham!

GOLDBERG. Of course, now. Time’s getting on. Round the corner, remember? Mention my name.

She was remarkable in a double bill of Harold Pinter plays that were gorgeously produced, delicately and frighteningly performed, and which made absolutely no sense whatsoever: in other words, quintessential Pinter.

EMMA It was never intended to be the same kind of home. Was it? Pause. You didn’t ever see it as a home, in any sense, did you? JERRY No, I saw it as a flat . . . you know. EMMA For fucking. JERRY No, for loving. EMMA Well, there’s not much of that left, is there? Silence. JERRY I don’t think we don’t love each other. Pause. EMMA

Literary figures have no pre-history. It is said that a theatre director who was staging one of Harold Pinter's plays asked the playwright for some hints as to what his characters were up to before they came on stage. Pinter's reply was ‘Mind your own fucking business.

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

Intellectual arses wobble the best.

Sometimes I think I have always been sitting like this. I sometimes think I have always been sitting like this, alone by an indifferent fire, curtains closed, night, winter.

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.(...)But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

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 believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

EMMA: You know what I found out ... last night? He's betrayed me for years. He's had... other women for years. JERRY No? Good Lord. (Pause) But we betrayed him for years. EMMA And he betrayed me for years. JERRY Well I never knew that. EMMA Nor did I.

So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken. My characters tell me so much and no more… 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 under what is said, another thing is being said.

Hold this thought: Right when you are most defeated–suicidal, perhaps–exhausted, positive of perpetual failure: this is when the epiphany is likely to arrive. One needs to be beaten down to think, and to think so as to escape. To escape death or boredom or the second act that simply will not do as you wish. Or the marriage that is stalled. Whatever is bearing down on you is a great teacher. Calm down and listen and crawl from beneath it a better person.

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. 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. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner.

You’re lovely. I’m crazy about you. All these words I’m using, don’t you see, they’ve never been said before. Can’t you see? I’m crazy about you. It’s a whirlwind. Have you ever been to the Sahara Desert? Listen to me. It’s true. Listen. You overwhelm me. You’re so lovely. You’re so beautiful. Look at the way you’re looking at me. Look at the way you’re looking at me. I can’t wait for you. I’m bowled over, I’m totally knocked out, you dazzle me, you jewel, my jewel, I can’t ever sleep again, no, listen, it’s the truth, I won’t walk, I’ll be a cripple, I’ll descend, I’ll diminish, into total paralysis, my life is in your hands, that’s what you’re banishing me to, a state of catatonia, do you know the state of catatonia? Do you? Do you? The state of … where the reigning prince is the prince of emptiness, the prince of absence, the prince of desolation. I love you. Everyone knows. The world knows. It knows. But they’ll never know, they’ll never know, they’re in a different world. I adore you. I’m madly in love with you. I can’t believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has ever happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened. Your eyes kill me. I’m lost. You’re wonderful.

Language... is a highly ambiguous business. So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken... You and I, the characters which grow on a page, most of the time we're inexpressive, giving little away, unreliable, elusive, obstructive, unwilling. But it's out of these attributes that a language arises. A language, I repeat, where under what is said, another thing is being said... There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smokescreen. When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness. We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase, "failure of communication", and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. I am not suggesting that no character in a play can ever say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there invariably does come a moment when this happens, when he says something, perhaps, which he has never said before. And where this happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back.

In a letter written to the play's director, Peter Wood, on 30th March 1958, just before the start of rehearsals, Pinter rightly refused to add extra lines explaining or justifying Stanley's motives in withdrawing from the world into a dingy seaside boarding-house: 'Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it.' But Pinter came much closer than he usually does to offering an explanation of the finished work: We've agreed: the hierarchy, the Establishment, the arbiters, the socio- religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre - he fights for his life. It doesn't last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation - an accusation compounded of the shit- stained strictures of centuries of 'tradition'. This gets us right to the heart of the matter. It is not simply a play about a pathetic victim brainwashed into social conformity. It is a play about the need to resist, with the utmost vigour, dead ideas and the inherited weight of the past. And if you examine the text, you notice how Pinter has toughened up the original image of the man in the Eastbourne digs with 'nowhere to go'. Pinter's Stanley Webber - a palpably Jewish name, incidentally - is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing: he's an ersatz, scarpegrace Oedipus to her boardinghouse Jocasta. But once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation - 'I've got to get things in for the two gentlemen' - he's as dangerous as a cornered animal. He affects a wanton grandeur with his talk of a European concert tour. He projects his own fear on to Meg by terrorising her with stories of nameless men coming to abduct her in a van. In his first solo encounter with McCann, he tries to win him over by appealing to a shared past (Maidenhead, Fuller's tea shop, Boots library) and a borrowed patriotism ('I know Ireland very well. I've many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people... I think their policemen are wonderful'). At the start of the interrogation he resists Goldberg's injunction to sit down and at the end of it he knees him in the stomach. And in the panic of the party, he attempts to strangle Meg and rape Lulu. These are hardly the actions of a supine victim. Even though Stanley is finally carried off shaven, besuited, white-collared and ostensibly tamed, the spirit of resistance is never finally quelled. When asked how he regards the prospect of being able to 'make or break' in the integrated outer world, he does not stay limply silent, but produces the most terrifying noises.

-did you think of her as your best friend? -she was my only friend. -your best and only. -my one and only. if you have only one of something you can't say it's the best of anything.

How's Emily? What a woman. [Pouring,] Black? Here you are. What a woman. Have to tell you I fell in love with her once upon a time. Have to confess it to you. Took her out to tea, in Dorchester. Told her of my yearning. Decided to take the bull by the horns. Proposed that she betray you. Admitted you were a damn fine chap, but pointed out I would be taking nothing that belonged to you, simply that portion of herself all women keep in reserve, for a rainy day. Had an infernal job persuading her. She said she adored you, her life would be meaningless were she to be false. Plied her with buttered scones, Wiltshire cream, crumpets and strawberries. Eventually she succumbed. Don't suppose you ever knew about it, what? Oh, we're too old now for it to matter, don't you agree?

Don’t be too sure though. You’ve forgotten something. Look at me. I… move my leg. That’s all it is. But I wear… underwear… which moves with me… it… captures your attention. Perhaps you misinterpret. The action is simple. It’s a leg… moving. My lips move. Why don’t you restrict… your observations to that? Perhaps the fact that they move is more significant… than the words which come through them. You must bear that… possibility… in mind. I was born quite near here. Then… six years ago, I went to America. It’s all rock. And sand. It stretches… so far… everywhere you look. And there’s lots of insects there. And there’s lots of insects there.

Everything is funny; the greatest earnestness is funny; even tragedy is funny. And I think what I try and do in my [writing] is to get this recognizable reality of the absurdity of what we do and how we behave and how we speak.

We shot The Local Stigmatic for a few weeks in Atlanta, with David Wheeler as our director, and a principal cast of myself, Paul Guilfoyle, Joe Maher, and Michael Higgins. When it was finished, we showed the film around to people we admired. We had a great dinner gathering of artists and literati in London. People like Tom Stoppard and David Hare, who all sat at a long table. Harold Pinter had seen the film twice at this point; he sat at the head of the table, and when he wanted to speak to everyone, he rang a little bell and the group fell silent. “Every once in a while,” he said, “we see something different. We come into contact with art in film.” I just sat there stunned. Heathcote was in the room, fiddling with a coin and not looking up at anyone, playing the role of the shy genius. He’d been described as a protégé of Pinter’s, but to actually be in the same room as his literary idol, I guess it all was just too much for him. I ran the film once for Elaine May, the great actress and filmmaker, who told me, “I liked it very much. But don’t you ever show this to the public. You don’t know your fame. You don’t understand it, and you don’t understand how it registers. You must recognize it.” And she was right. You’re too well-known for this sort of thing. You have to be careful, because you’re going to startle people. Don’t put this in a theater. I showed it to Jonas Mekas, the independent-film impresario of downtown Manhattan, who ran The Local Stigmatic at his Anthology Film Archives and told me, somewhat optimistically, that I was going to win an Oscar for it. I kept calling Andrew Sarris, the film critic for The Village Voice, to come and see it. And he said, “Stop bothering me, Al. I’ve seen it three times already. I’ve told you what I think. Just show the thing already.” I was trying to get the confidence to screen it for wider audiences. I never did. I’ve come to realize that when I do my own things, nobody goes. Those avant-garde influences that I was brought up with never left my brain. When I’m left on my own, that’s just what seems to come out. It’s a drawback. People come in with expectations, and they leave angry. The Local Stigmatic is such a specific distillation of me and my take on this subject. It’s 150 proof, which can be a little strong for some people.

GOLDBERG: Somewhere over the rainbow... MCCANN: Where angels fear to tread. GOLDBERG: Exactly.

STANLEY: How would you like to go away with me? LULU: Where? STANLEY: Nowhere. Still, we could go. LULU: But where could we go? STANLEY: Nowhere. There's nowhere to go. So we could just go. It wouldn't matter. LULU: We might as well stay here. STANLEY: No. It's no good here. LULU: Well, where else is there? STANLEY: Nowhere.

(In Latin America, the United States behaved in the very way that Harold Pinter thinks it has always behaved everywhere.)

DEELEY: Myself I was a student then, juggling with my future, wondering should I bejasus saddle myself with a slip of a girl not long out of her swaddling clothes whose only claim to virtue was silence but who lacked any sense of fixedness, any sense of decisiveness, but was compliant only to the shifting winds, with which she went, but not the winds, and certainly not my winds, such as they are, but I suppose winds that only she understood, and that of course with no understanding whatsoever, at least as I understand the word, at least that’s the way I figured it. A classic female figure, I said to myself, or is it a classic female posture, one way or the other long outworn.

Petey: It was good, eh? [Pause.] Meg: I was the belle of the ball. Petey: Were you? Meg: Oh yes. They all said I was. Petey: I bet you were, too. Meg: Oh, it’s true. I was. [Pause.] I know I was. [Curtain]

BRIGGS: We’re old friends, Jack and myself. We met at a street corner. I should tell you he’ll deny this account. His story will be different. I was standing at a street corner. A car drew up. It was him. He asked me the way to Bolsover Street. I told him Bolsover Street was in the middle of an intricate one-way system. It was a one-way system easy enough to get into. The only trouble was that, once in, you couldn’t get out. I told him his best bet, if he really wanted to get to Bolsover Street, was to take the first left, first right, second right, third on the left, keep his eye open for a hardware shop, go right round the square, keeping to the inside lane, take the second Mews on the right and then stop. He will find himself facing a very tall office block, with a crescent courtyard. He can take advantage of this office block. He can go round the crescent, come out the other way, follow the arrows, go past two sets of traffic lights and take the next left indicated by the first green filter he comes across. He’s got the Post Office Tower in his vision the whole time. All he’s got to do is to reverse into the underground car park, change gear, go straight on, and he’ll find himself in Bolsover Street with no trouble at all. I did warn him, though, that he’ll still be faced with the problem, having found Bolsover Street, of losing it. I told him I knew one or two people who’d been wandering up and down Bolsover Street for years. They’d wasted their bloody youth there. The people who live there, their faces are grey, they’re in a state of despair, but nobody pays any attention, you see. All people are worried about is their ill-gotten gains. I wrote to The Times about it. Life At A Dead End, I called it. Went for nothing. Anyway, I told him that probably the best thing he could do was to forget the whole idea of getting to Bolsover Street. I remember saying to him: This trip you’ve got in mind, drop it, it could prove fatal. But he said he had to deliver a parcel. Anyway, I took all this trouble with him because he had a nice open face. He looked like a man who would always do good to others himself. Normally I wouldn’t give a fuck. I should tell you he’ll deny this account. His story will be different.

There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art, there are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

Look what I'm lumbered with. One load of cast-iron crap after another." --Harold Pinter: The Homecoming.

It was all go at that time. Love, football, the arts, the occasional pint. Mind you, I preferred a fruity white wine but you couldn't actually say that in those days.

Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it... We’ve agreed: the hierarchy, The Establishment, the arbiters, the socio-religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre – he fights for his life. It doesn’t last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation – an accusation compounded of the shit-stained strictures of centuries of ‘tradition’.

[On Betrayal, by Harold Pinter] …the sleight of hand that Harold has performed is that, while dealing with a triangular relationship, he’s talking about something else ...If you start with self-betrayal, it gradually infects everything like a dreadful, destructive virus.

And there she was, very dim, very still, placed more or less I would say at the dead centre of the auditorium. I was off centre and have remained so.

„Кад се погледамо у огледало, мислимо да је слика коју видимо верна. Али, померимо ли се само милиметар, слика се мења. Ми, заправо, гледамо бескрајне одразе. Али писац понекад мора да разбије огледало, јер с друге стране тог огледала истина нам зури право у лице.

God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.

Membership finds its ceremonial endorsement through the dance. In almost all tribal communities dancing has had an important role in reinforcing the communal spirit, and in particular in ceremonies of initiation and marriage. It represents a supreme act of surrender to the tribe and its ruling deities. In dancing we set all purpose aside and are governed by the spirit of the dance. At the same time, dancing has a peculiar social intentionality – in the normal case dancing is a ‘dancing with’, a fitting of one’s steps and gestures to the steps and gestures of others. In the old culture of Europe dancing was therefore a part of courtship – a kind of stylised intimacy in which the sexual allure of the body could be displayed and enjoyed without social catastrophe. For young lovers, dancing was a way of going ‘part-hog’, as Harold Pinter would put it, while behaving with proper decorum and with an excited consciousness of their embodiment. But it was not only young lovers who danced. Traditional dances were formation dances, like the minuet, the jig and the saraband, in which you changed partners, to find yourself dancing with someone (your grandmother perhaps) in whom you had no sexual interest whatsoever. In the Mediterranean, it was even unheard of for the sexes to dance together: the men performed in a troupe, and then the girls, each sex with an eye for the other but decorously removed from physical contact. In this way dancing became a ceremony, in which the community’s bid for eternity was enacted beneath the stars. Love, sex and the body are perceived differently by young people today; courtesy and courtship have disappeared from their dancing, since they have disappeared from their lives. The idea of dancing as an orderly affirmation of community is dead. Dancing has become a social and sexual release, among people who expressly represent themselves, in the dance, as sexual objects, even when, and especially when, they dance without a partner. Indeed the concept of the partner – of the one with whom you are dancing, and who agrees to dance after an exchange of courtesies – hardly engages with the new reality. You all dance together, and every step or shake or gesture is right just so long as it feels right. Nor is this new kind of dancing of marginal significance. On the contrary, it is the central episode in the youth culture, the moment when the individual renews his attachment to the group and is raised to a heightened level of excitement and a sense of the rightness of being what he is and doing what he does.

Hay cosas que uno recuerda aunque a lo mejor no pasaron nunca. Hay cosas que yo recuerdo que a lo mejor nunca pasaron, pero, como las recuerdo, entonces ocurren de verdad

Philosophy is a process of inquiry only. It doesn't attempt to find specific answers to specific questions.

A version of antiplot is backward storytelling, like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, in which the scenes are laid out in reverse chronological order. Backward storytelling actually highlights the organic unfolding of the story by highlighting the causal thread between scenes. This thread is normally buried under the surface; one scene seems to naturally follow another. But by going backward, the audience is forced to become conscious of the connecting thread between scenes. They can see that what just happened had to evolve from the event that came before it and the event that came before that.

[On Betrayal, by Harold Pinter] …if you start with self-betrayal, it gradually infects everything like a dreadful, destructive virus.

The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression.

I'm not being personal, of course, just being... psychological.

Sometimes I wish the night would never end. I like sleeping. I could sleep... on and on.

Don't look. The world's about to break. Don't look. The world's about to chuck out all its light and stuff us in the chokepit of its dark, That black and fat suffocated place Where we will kill or die or dance or weep Or scream of whine or squeak like mice To renegotiate our starting price.