Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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I 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?
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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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.
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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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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I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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