The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETTBut most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
ALAN BENNETT -
f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!
ALAN BENNETT -
Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
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 -
There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
ALAN BENNETT -
It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
ALAN BENNETT -
Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
ALAN BENNETT -
Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETT -
Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
ALAN BENNETT -
I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
ALAN BENNETT -
Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
ALAN BENNETT -
We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
ALAN BENNETT -
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
ALAN BENNETT -
Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
ALAN BENNETT






