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, giv… - Harold Pinter

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?

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’.

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.