I think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
ALAN BENNETTI think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
ALAN BENNETTOne of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
ALAN BENNETTI can walk. It’s just that I’m so rich I don’t need to.
ALAN BENNETTI saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
ALAN BENNETTI was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
ALAN BENNETTNature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
ALAN BENNETTHistory is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
ALAN BENNETTStandards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETTImagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
ALAN BENNETTIf you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
ALAN BENNETTI 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 BENNETTBut then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
ALAN BENNETTTo begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
ALAN BENNETTThe 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 BENNETTPut him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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 BENNETT