[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
ALAN BENNETTIllogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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 -
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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 -
It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
ALAN BENNETT -
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETT -
I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
ALAN BENNETT -
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
ALAN BENNETT -
It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
ALAN BENNETT -
If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
ALAN BENNETT -
I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETT -
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETT -
Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
ALAN BENNETT -
If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
ALAN BENNETT






