To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
ALAN BENNETTThe 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.”
More Alan Bennett Quotes
-
-
A book, as it were, closes the book.
ALAN BENNETT -
My experience came before most of you were born.
ALAN BENNETT -
I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
ALAN BENNETT -
You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
ALAN BENNETT -
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETT -
We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
ALAN BENNETT -
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETT -
A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
ALAN BENNETT -
Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
ALAN BENNETT -
Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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 -
The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
ALAN BENNETT -
If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
ALAN BENNETT -
The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETT -
At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT