Harold Pinter Quotes

We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven.

You aren't afraid of throwing yourself in the path of danger, but you're terrified of letting anyone in.

Only silence communicates the truth as it is.

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.

To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstandin g of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear.

Her silence was the blank space between the words.

Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.

The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it.

When mouths close, it’s because there’s something important to be said.

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.

Nonverbal communication is an elaborate secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.

There is a form of communication that transcends the power of words.

It is silence that most needs an answering -- when I can no longer speak, hear me.

When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak be our silent statement.

When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.

There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.

The others wolves would devour me if they could know that my roar is, in reality, a crying.

If "there is no harm in asking," why guilt and fear when we do so?

Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.

Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent.

I never said nothing..." "I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!

You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.