[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[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 BENNETTA bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
ALAN BENNETTSo, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
ALAN BENNETTOf course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETTThat’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
ALAN BENNETTWe don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
ALAN BENNETTI’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
ALAN BENNETTI suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
ALAN BENNETTArtists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
ALAN BENNETTOver the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
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 BENNETTCloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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 BENNETTMy experience came before most of you were born.
ALAN BENNETTThe days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETTWhy is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
ALAN BENNETT