Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
I find it deeply embarrassing when, because art takes notice of something important, it's claimed th...
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I find it deeply embarrassing when, because art takes notice of something important, it's claimed that the art is important. It's not. We are talking about marginalia - the top tiny fraction of the whole edifice. When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all.
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The term artist isn't intelligible to me if it doesn't entail making.
The term artist isn't intelligible to me if it doesn't entail making.
Actors are the opposite of people.
Actors are the opposite of people.
The first time I met Harold Pinter was when I was a student journalist in Bristol and he came down t...
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The first time I met Harold Pinter was when I was a student journalist in Bristol and he came down to see a student production of The Birthday Party. I realised he was sitting in front of me. I was tremendously intimidated and spent a good long time working out how to engage him in conversation. Finally, I tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Are you Harold Pinter or do you just look like him?' He said, 'What?' So that was the end of that.
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It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
[In 1968] A few miles away across the Channel, clashes between protesters and riot police were affai...
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[In 1968] A few miles away across the Channel, clashes between protesters and riot police were affairs of burning cars, overturned buses and buildings turned to rubble. Our own street-fighting man was only rock 'n' roll.
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Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.
Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picni...
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Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
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If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of...
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If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
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Early on in my career, I had an interview with Mr Charles Wintour, the editor of the Evening Standar...
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Early on in my career, I had an interview with Mr Charles Wintour, the editor of the Evening Standard. At one point, Mr Wintour asked me if I were interested in politics. Thinking all journalists should be interested in politics, I told him I was. He then asked me who the current home secretary was. Of course, I had no idea who the current home secretary was, and, in any event, it was an unfair question. I'd only admitted to an interest in politics. I hadn't claimed I was obsessed with the subject.
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I wrote a play about Charles I when I was twelve. It was surprisingly conventional; he died in the e...
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I wrote a play about Charles I when I was twelve. It was surprisingly conventional; he died in the end.
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[In 1968] It wasn't all posh, of course. The "scene", as we called it, was more populously located i...
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[In 1968] It wasn't all posh, of course. The "scene", as we called it, was more populously located in a shifting underground of art events - exhibitions, gigs, happenings, poetry readings - in dark places around Covent Garden and elsewhere and here the word "revolution" takes on some substance, I think. It was not a social revolution, but there was a sense of a cultural revolution pivoted on that moment. Unfortunately, I was embarrassed by that, too. I loved the music and the dressing up but I couldn't take to the dialogue: a reductive argot of comrade-jargon and bogus wisdom derived from misunderstood eastern religions.
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Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always s...
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The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
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If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.
Every exit is an entry somewhere.
Every exit is an entry somewhere.
Life is a gamble at terrible odds. If it were a bet, you would not take it.
Life is a gamble at terrible odds. If it were a bet, you would not take it.
I came here [to Britain] when I was eight. Within minutes, it seems to me, I had no sense of being i...
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I came here [to Britain] when I was eight. Within minutes, it seems to me, I had no sense of being in an alien land and my feelings for English landscape, English architecture, English character, all this, have just somehow become stronger and stronger.
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If I had known in 1968 what we were going to squander, long before we had the excuse of 9/11, I migh...
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If I had known in 1968 what we were going to squander, long before we had the excuse of 9/11, I might have joined in the fun with less embarrassment, with less to lose. But at the time all the goings-on seemed frivolous compared with the freedoms we had invented - or should I say the freedoms you invented?'I was 31, I had been earning a living for 14 years, I was too old, too self-conscious, too monogamous, too frightened of drugs, too much in love with England and too hung up to let it all hang out.
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I'm an English middle-class bourgeois, who prefers to read a book to almost anything else. It would ...
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I'm an English middle-class bourgeois, who prefers to read a book to almost anything else. It would be an insane pretension for me to write 'poems of a petrol bomber'.
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I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it. [parodying th...
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I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it. [parodying the saying of Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it."]
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We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our prog...
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We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
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I find, looking back on my plays in general, that things tended to work out better if I didn't quite...
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I find, looking back on my plays in general, that things tended to work out better if I didn't quite know where I was going with them.
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The days of the digital watch are numbered.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
In the period just before the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Ev...
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In the period just before the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything was so hedged, so mealy-mouthed. Then along came this woman who seemed to have no manners at all and who said exactly what she thought. She turned the political scene into a kind of Bateman cartoon, and everyone's eyes were popping and their jaws were dropping. I really enjoyed that, although I don't consider that period a good influence on my own world.
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[In 1968] I was asked to sign a protest against "censorship" after a newspaper declined to publish s...
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[In 1968] I was asked to sign a protest against "censorship" after a newspaper declined to publish somebody's manifesto. "But that isn't censorship," I said. "That's editing. In Russia you go to prison for possessing a copy of Animal Farm. That's censorship."
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I think, like a lot of writers, I've got a cheap side and an expensive side. I mean rather like a mu...
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I think, like a lot of writers, I've got a cheap side and an expensive side. I mean rather like a musician might stop composing for a few days to do a jingle for 'Katomeat' because he thinks it's fun.
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