Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
ALAN BENNETTIt’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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[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.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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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.
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