The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
ALAN BENNETTThe majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
ALAN BENNETTThere is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
ALAN BENNETTA bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
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 BENNETTSo boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
ALAN BENNETTWe started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETTBut then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
ALAN BENNETTFar from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
ALAN BENNETTChildren always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
ALAN BENNETTThe nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
ALAN BENNETTIn the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
ALAN BENNETT[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 BENNETTWhat she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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 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 BENNETTLife is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETT