Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETTThe liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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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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In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
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I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.
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Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
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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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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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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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[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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