The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to.

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.'

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.

I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?

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.

Things like Abu Ghraib and even Guantanamo are not new things: there are many precedents.

I certainly feel sad about the alienation from my son.

I find the whole Blairish idea more and more repugnant every day. 'New Labour': the term itself is so trashy. Kind of ersatz.

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.

Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

All I'm saying is that there are many different kinds of political theatre and many plays I greatly admire: 'Antigone,' 'Mother Courage,' 'All My Sons.' But, if I tackle a political theme, I have to do it in my own way.

One should also remember that the U.S. is the biggest exporter of torture weapons in the world, though the U.K. is not far behind in the league table. We never stopped, even under Robin Cook's supposedly ethical foreign policy.

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.

A few friends and me used to go and watch Bunuel, Carne, Cocteau... Cocteau and Bunuel were surrealism. And I was very excited by that. 'Un Chien Andalou', especially.

The only theatre I ever saw was Shakespeare.

Cricket, the whole thing, playing, watching, being part of the Gaieties, has been a central feature of my life.

I used to get up at five in the morning and play cricket.

I think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!

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.

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 often, I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved - equally as often - quite wrong.

I wrote 'The Room', 'The Birthday Party', and 'The Dumb Waiter' in 1957, I was acting all the time in a repertory company, doing all kinds of jobs, traveling to Bournemouth and Torquay and Birmingham.

It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.