It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTAuthors, 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETT -
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
ALAN BENNETT -
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETT -
What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETT -
I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
ALAN BENNETT -
To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
ALAN BENNETT -
Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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 -
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
ALAN BENNETT -
Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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 -
My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETT -
Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETT