Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETTLife is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETTChildren always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
ALAN BENNETTRemember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETTWere we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETTKafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
ALAN BENNETTOne of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
ALAN BENNETTI lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
ALAN BENNETTA book is a device to ignite the imagination.
ALAN BENNETTIllogically, 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.
ALAN BENNETTOf course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETTBut then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
ALAN BENNETTI think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
ALAN BENNETTWe still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
ALAN BENNETTThey may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
ALAN BENNETTNever read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
ALAN BENNETTAt eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT