Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETTTo play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETT -
Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
ALAN BENNETT -
Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
ALAN BENNETT -
I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
ALAN BENNETT -
Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
ALAN BENNETT -
To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
ALAN BENNETT -
Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
ALAN BENNETT -
The 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 BENNETT -
Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
ALAN BENNETT -
[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
ALAN BENNETT -
My experience came before most of you were born.
ALAN BENNETT -
Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETT -
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
ALAN BENNETT -
A book, as it were, closes the book.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETT






