History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
ALAN BENNETTThe sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
ALAN BENNETT -
I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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 -
Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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 -
Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
ALAN BENNETT -
Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
ALAN BENNETT -
Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT -
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETT -
If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
ALAN BENNETT -
At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT -
It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
ALAN BENNETT -
There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
ALAN BENNETT -
Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
ALAN BENNETT -
I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
ALAN BENNETT