PINTER: [..] I read Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, and Henry Miller at a very early age, and Kafka. I’d read Beckett’s novels, too, but I’d never heard of Ionesco until after I’d written the first few plays.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think these writers had any influence on your writing?

PINTER: I’ve been influenced personally by everyone I’ve ever read—and I read all the time—but none of these writers particularly influenced my writing. Beckett and Kafka stayed with me the most—I think Beckett is the best prose writer living. My world is still bound up by other writers—that’s one of the best things in it.