Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
ALAN BENNETTHave you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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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Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.
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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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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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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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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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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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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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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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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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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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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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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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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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