If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
ALAN BENNETTIf I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
ALAN BENNETTThe sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
ALAN BENNETTIf you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
ALAN BENNETTThey may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
ALAN BENNETTBut most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
ALAN BENNETTBooks generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.
ALAN BENNETTI bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
ALAN BENNETTI dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
ALAN BENNETTLife is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETTThe best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.
ALAN BENNETTOf course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETTOf course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETTClichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
ALAN BENNETTOne recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
ALAN BENNETTYou must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
ALAN BENNETTIn the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
ALAN BENNETT