I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were. You might see faces of others, in shadow, or cheeks of others, turning, or jaws, or backs of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which remind you of others, whom you once knew, whom you thought long dead, but from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance, if you can face the good ghost. Allow the love of the good ghost. They possess all that emotion… trapped. Bow to it. It will assuredly never release them, but who knows… what relief… it may give to them… who knows how they may quicken… in their chains, in their glass jars. You think it cruel… to quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No…no. Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy… is unbounded. And so I say to you, tender the dead, as you yourself would be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life.
–Harold Pinter (from “No Man’s Land“)
Thanks to my friend C. Wilkins who forwarded this gorgeous quote with a note from the Harold Pinter Society that Pinter requested it be read at his funeral.
Photo: Nobel Prize site
