One of the few things I have learned in life isthat there is invariablysomething
odd about womenwho wearankle socks.
1977 The Old Country, act1. |
Life is rather like a tin of sardineswe're all of us looking for the key.
Alan BennettIt's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
Alan BennettWe were put to Dickens as children but it never took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Alan BennettThere is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
Alan BennettI'm going to throwcaution to the winds and have a sweet sherry.
Alan BennettI want a future that will live up to my past.
Alan BennettThey're going to have to be made to sit up and take notice. They're going to have to be made to realise who we are. My father had a chain of dry cleaners.
Alan BennettGeoff: We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
Alan BennettPolly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
Alan BennettI lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
Alan BennettThat's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
Alan BennettHeadmaster: They were all socialists. Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
Alan BennettSchoolmaster: But God, whatever else He is, and of course He is everything else, is not a fool.
Alan BennettHe had never read Proust , but he had somehow taken a short cut across the allotments and arrived at the same conclusions.
Alan BennettAn article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
Alan BennettThe majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
Alan BennettTo play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan BennettKafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
Alan BennettI have no doubt that in heaven the angels will regard the blessed as a necessary evil.
Alan BennettOne of the good things about Larkin is that he still has you firmly by the hand as you cross the finishing-line, whereas reading Auden is like doing a parachute-drop: for a while the view is wonderful, but then you end up on your back in the middle of a ploughed field and in the wrong county.
Alan BennettSchweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
Alan BennettWriter: What, above all, I'm primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, that's it, really. I'm taking the pith out of reality.
Alan BennettIf you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
Alan BennettWe started off trying to set up a small anarchist community , but people wouldn't obey the rules .
Alan BennettToo late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up.
Alan Bennett