Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETTWere we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETTWe started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETTLife is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETTRemember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETTBut the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTI’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
ALAN BENNETTA composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
ALAN BENNETTHistory is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
ALAN BENNETTThe nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
ALAN BENNETTHave you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETTThe Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
ALAN BENNETTIf I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
ALAN BENNETTGod doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
ALAN BENNETTI turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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 BENNETTAt eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT