But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
ALAN BENNETTBut then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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 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 BENNETTArt comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
ALAN BENNETTAll the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I’d got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
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 BENNETTFar 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 BENNETTIf I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
ALAN BENNETTCloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
ALAN BENNETTHis writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
ALAN BENNETTI’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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 BENNETTMy school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
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 BENNETTNature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
ALAN BENNETTThe appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
ALAN BENNETT