I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect. I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.
Harold PinterRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Speech often conceals our true feelings and vulnerabilities, acting as a barrier to authenticity.
In this quote, Harold Pinter suggests that the way we communicate often hides our innermost thoughts and emotions. Speech serves as a protective layer, allowing us to avoid vulnerability, while true silence reveals the raw truth of our existence. The metaphor of speech as a 'smoke screen' indicates that our words can mislead or disguise our true selves, and in genuine silence, we confront our actual state of being.
Themes
SpeechSilenceTruthCommunicationAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the challenges of honest communication in relationships.
More from Harold Pinter
All quotes →All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
Harold PinterRead
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.
Harold PinterRead
I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.
Harold PinterRead
It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.
Harold PinterRead
There are places in my heart...where no living soul...has...or can ever...trespass.
Harold PinterRead
Similar quotes
Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.
Michel FoucaultRead
The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.
NovalisRead
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
Edward AbbeyRead
I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .
John Stuart MillRead
The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.
Dallas WillardRead
There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
Bertrand RussellRead