"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them."

Harold Pinter on the occasion of accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pinter, we're told, was "[d]ressed in black, bristling with controlled fury."

Mr. Pinter attacked American foreign policy since World War II, saying that while the crimes of the Soviet Union had been well documented, those of the United States had not. "I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road," he said. "Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love."