Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETTIt [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
ALAN BENNETT -
I 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 BENNETT -
In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
ALAN BENNETT -
They 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 BENNETT -
Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
ALAN BENNETT -
But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
ALAN BENNETT -
I 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 BENNETT -
Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
ALAN BENNETT -
Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
ALAN BENNETT -
The 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 BENNETT -
Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT -
It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETT -
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
ALAN BENNETT -
I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
ALAN BENNETT -
Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
ALAN BENNETT