If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETT -
I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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 -
Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETT -
Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
ALAN BENNETT -
A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
ALAN BENNETT -
What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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 -
Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.
ALAN BENNETT -
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.
ALAN BENNETT -
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.
ALAN BENNETT -
They 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 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 -
It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
ALAN BENNETT -
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
ALAN BENNETT