I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
ALAN BENNETTI had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
ALAN BENNETTBooks did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
ALAN BENNETTAuthors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.
ALAN BENNETTYou have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
ALAN BENNETTThe longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
ALAN BENNETTWe started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETTNature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
ALAN BENNETTWere we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETT[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
ALAN BENNETTPut him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
ALAN BENNETTKafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
ALAN BENNETTSometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
ALAN BENNETTThere’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
ALAN BENNETTI have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
ALAN BENNETTHowever bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
ALAN BENNETTNor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
ALAN BENNETT