A 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 BENNETTOne of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
ALAN BENNETT -
If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
ALAN BENNETT -
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
ALAN BENNETT -
My experience came before most of you were born.
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 -
Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
ALAN BENNETT -
His 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 BENNETT -
Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.
ALAN BENNETT -
I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
ALAN BENNETT -
If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
ALAN BENNETT -
The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
ALAN BENNETT -
Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
ALAN BENNETT -
I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
ALAN BENNETT -
No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
ALAN BENNETT -
A 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 BENNETT