We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
ALAN BENNETTOne of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
ALAN BENNETT -
And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
ALAN BENNETT -
An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
ALAN BENNETT -
To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETT -
So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
ALAN BENNETT -
We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
ALAN BENNETT -
The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
ALAN BENNETT -
The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETT -
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
ALAN BENNETT -
Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
ALAN BENNETT -
One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
ALAN BENNETT -
Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT -
Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETT -
Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
ALAN BENNETT