I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
ALAN BENNETTSchweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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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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Illogically, 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.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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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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…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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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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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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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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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
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What 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.
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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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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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Because 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.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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