Alan Bennett Quotes

Quotes about:

• The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

  Alan Bennett

  Inspirational, Motivational, Reading

  The History Boys, www.imdb.com. 2006.

  74 Copy quote

• Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

  Alan Bennett

  Inspirational, Life, Moving Forward

  1960 Beyond the Fringe.

  92 Copy quote

• Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. 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

  Book, Other Worlds, Wish

  Alan Bennett (2008). “The Uncommon Reader”, p.13, Faber & Faber

  60 Copy quote

• Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.

  Alan Bennett

  Second Chance, Now Or Never, Next

  100 Copy quote

• Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

  Alan Bennett

  Inspirational, Funny, Wall

  Alan Bennett (2008). “Alan Bennett Plays 1: Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus and Enjoy”, p.53, Faber & Faber

  22 Copy quote

• We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

  Alan Bennett

  Change, Organization, People

  Getting On (1972) act 1

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Buckets, Incapability

  The History Boys, www.imdb.com. 2006.

  32 Copy quote

• You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

  Alan Bennett

  Book

  Alan Bennett (2008). “The Uncommon Reader”, p.40, Faber & Faber

  15 Copy quote

• I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.

  Alan Bennett

  Business, Expression, Favour

  Alan Bennett (2008). “Alan Bennett Plays 1: Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus and Enjoy”, p.53, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

  Alan Bennett

  Flower, Thinking, Squash

  Alan Bennett (2010). “The Complete Talking Heads”, p.56, Macmillan

  24 Copy quote

• A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.

  Alan Bennett

  Clothes, Shoes, Feet

  Alan Bennett (2016). “Keeping On Keeping On”, p.296, Profile Books

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Sunday, People, Majority

  Alan Bennett (2008). “Writing Home”, p.151, Faber & Faber

  24 Copy quote

• Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

  Alan Bennett

  Remember You, Remembers You, People

  Alan Bennett (2011). “Smut: Two Unseemly Stories”, p.39, Profile Books

  26 Copy quote

• It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.

  Alan Bennett

  Taken, Civilization, Safety

  10 Copy quote

• Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

  Alan Bennett

  Life, Life Is, Elsewhere

  Alan Bennett (2012). “Hymn and Cocktail Sticks”, p.62, Faber & Faber

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Wall, Nice, Writing

  Alan Bennett (2008). “Writing Home”, p.193, Faber & Faber

  13 Copy quote

• I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

  Alan Bennett

  Civilization, Saws, Ends

  22 Copy quote

• At eighty things do not occur; they recur.

  Alan Bennett

  Eighty

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Two, Medicine

  1973 Habeas Corpus.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Reading, Doors

  Alan Bennett (2008). “The Uncommon Reader”, p.10, Faber & Faber

  16 Copy quote

• What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.

  Alan Bennett

  Reality, Substance, Concerned

  15 Copy quote

• I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.

  Alan Bennett

  Book, Writing, Want

  15 Copy quote

• That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

  Alan Bennett

  Men, Water, Sahara

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  15 Copy quote

• Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.

  Alan Bennett

  Memories, Franklin, Garlands

  1968 Forty Years On (published1969), act 2.

  13 Copy quote

• Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.

  Alan Bennett

  Art, Voice, Sound

  Alan Bennett (2008). “Writing Home”, p.10, Faber & Faber

  10 Copy quote

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