Best Alan Bennett Quotes & Sayings

The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on countless theatre visits and trips to places of interest. — Alan Bennett

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

But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all. — Alan Bennett

I suppose I'm the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it's the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other. — Alan Bennett

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull. — Alan Bennett

One has met and indeed entertained many visiting heads of state, some of them unspeakable crooks and blackguards ... One has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore ... Sometimes one has felt like a scented candle, sent in to perfume a regime, or aerate a policy, monarchy these days just a government-issue deoderant. — 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

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key. — Alan Bennett

I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don't think it was decided at that meeting. The trouble is, as soon as you've chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of. It's like going to a place that you've never been to before - you've got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality. — Alan Bennett

It is seldom at the frontier that discoveries are made but more often in the dustbin. — Alan Bennett

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's someone announcing the departure of trains. — Alan Bennett

I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact ever since. — Alan Bennett

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

Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now! — Alan Bennett

Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am?"
"In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It's not laid down, is it? It's not off-limits?"
"Not that I'm aware, ma'am."
"Good. Well in that case I'm going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight."
The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing. — Alan Bennett

BURGESS
How do you like Moscow?

CORAL
Loathe it, darling. I cannot understand what those Three Sisters were on about. It gives the play a very sinister slant. — Alan Bennett

Never at my best when at my best behaviour. — Alan Bennett

I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to. — 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. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them. — Alan Bennett

I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. — Alan Bennett

I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The 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. — Alan Bennett

I've never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin. The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really. — Alan Bennett

I am the King. I tell. I am not told. I am the verb, sir. I am not the object. (King George III) — Alan Bennett

I am married,' she shouted, 'to the cupboard under the sink.' A remark made more mysterious to Mrs Barnes by the sound of a passing ice-cream van playing the opening bars of the 'Blue Danube'. — Alan Bennett

HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull.
IRWIN: Oh. Larkin.
HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know about the poetry ... as I say, I was a geographer ... but as a librarian he was pitiless. The Himmler of the Accessions Desk. And now, we're told, women in droves.
Art. They get away with murder. — Alan Bennett

At eighty things do not occur; they recur. — Alan Bennett

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up. — Alan Bennett

She'd never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. — Alan Bennett

History nowadays is not a matter of conviction.
It's a performance. It's entertainment. And if it isn't, make it so. — Alan Bennett

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. — Alan Bennett

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on. — Alan Bennett

Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it. — Alan Bennett

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement. — Alan Bennett

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means. — Alan Bennett

I would have thought," said the prime minister, "that Your Majesty was above literature."
"Above literature?" said the Queen. "Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity. — Alan Bennett

You don't put your life into books. You find it there. — Alan Bennett