[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 BENNETTBecause you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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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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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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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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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
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A 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.
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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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My experience came before most of you were born.
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Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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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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I 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.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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