Alan Bennett Quotes
1934 -
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One of the few things I have learned in life isthat there is invariablysomething
odd about womenwho wearankle socks.
1977 The Old Country, act1. 
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More Alan Bennett Quotes
Life is rather like a tin of sardineswe're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett— 1960 Beyond the Fringe.
It'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 Bennett— 1971Of dogs. Getting On (published1972), act1.
The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.
Alan Bennett— 1973 Habeas Corpus.
We were put to Dickens as children but it never took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Alan Bennett— 1977 The Old Country, act 2.
There 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 Bennett— 1984 A Private Function, introduction to published screenplay.
I'm going to throwcaution to the winds and have a sweet sherry.
Alan Bennett— 1984 Spoken by Maggie Smith as Joyce Chilvers in A Private Function.
I want a future that will live up to my past.
Alan Bennett— 1984 Spoken by Maggie Smith as Joyce Chilvers in A Private Function.
They'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 Bennett— 1984 A Private Function.
Geoff: We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
Alan Bennett— Getting On, Act 1 (1972)
Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
Alan Bennett— Getting On, Act 1
I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
Alan Bennett— An Englishman Abroad (1983)
That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
Alan Bennett— Quoted in the Daily Telegraph, October 30, 2004. [2]When asked by Sir Ian McKellen, in 1997, whether he was heterosexual or homosexual.
Headmaster: They were all socialists. Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
Alan Bennett— Act 2, p. 75.Of the Bloomsbury group.
Schoolmaster: But God, whatever else He is, and of course He is everything else, is not a fool.
Alan Bennett— Act 2, p. 78.
He had never read Proust , but he had somehow taken a short cut across the allotments and arrived at the same conclusions.
Alan Bennett— "Russell Harty, 1934 – 1988", p. 52 (1988)
An 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 Bennett— Diary entry for November 11, 1981, p. 117
The 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 Bennett— Diary entry for October 13, 1984, pp. 137-138
To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan Bennett— Diary entry for June 7, 1985, p. 143
Kafka 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 Bennett— Diary entry for June 27, 1988, p. 177
I have no doubt that in heaven the angels will regard the blessed as a necessary evil.
Alan Bennett— Diary entry for August 9, 1985, p. 290
One 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 Bennett— "Instead of a Present", p. 323 (1982)
Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
Alan Bennett— "Kafka in Las Vegas", p. 348
Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
Alan Bennett— "Alas! Deceived", p. 367 (1993)
Writer: 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 Bennett— "The Pith and its Pitfalls", p. 384 (1981)
If 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 Bennett— "The Pith and its Pitfalls", p. 385 (1981)
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community , but people wouldn't obey the rules .
Alan Bennett— Alan Bennett, Getting On (1972), Act I
Too late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up.
Alan Bennett— The Uncommon Reader
