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.
ALAN BENNETTI 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
ALAN BENNETT -
Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
ALAN BENNETT -
…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.
ALAN BENNETT -
I 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 BENNETT -
Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
ALAN BENNETT -
I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
ALAN BENNETT -
Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
ALAN BENNETT -
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
ALAN BENNETT -
I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
ALAN BENNETT -
In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
ALAN BENNETT -
Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
ALAN BENNETT -
Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
ALAN BENNETT -
There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
ALAN BENNETT -
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.
ALAN BENNETT -
Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
ALAN BENNETT