Top Alan Bennett Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Alan Bennett Biography

Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. He was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with the Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full-time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.

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Alan Bennett Quotes

At eighty things do not occur; they recur.

Eighty, Occur, Recur, Things

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.

Concerned, Primarily, Reality, Substance

[talking about the Holocaust] 'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away. ' 'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be. . . even on the Holocaust.

Dead, Distance, Holocaust, Jobs, Mean

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.

Ages, Artist, Father, Humanity, Husband

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.

Clichés, Fun, Quite

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

Like, Long, Pay, Polly, Sex, Socialists

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.

Bore, Cancer, Cancer Survivor, Illness, Like

To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. 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.

Book, Ideas, Outfaced, Reading, Same

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

Children, Emptier, Grass, Ground

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.

Effort, Found, Goes On, Nothing, Thought

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

Anarchist, Change, Organization, People, Rules, Set

The thing I think about is that once you've done it, you then start to think about what you're going to do next. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.

Done, Follow, Successful, Thing, Think, Thinking

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.

Forgotten, Ideas, Nobody, Scholarship, School

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

Book, Lives, Other Worlds, Passing, Time

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling'.

Coats, Doubt, Drabber, Moments, Steps, Underling

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

Fall, Famous, Knowing, Known, Memories

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

Boys, Hardest, Teacher, Things, Trying

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.

Idea, Obscures, Play, Reality, Thinking, Trouble

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

Hand, Inspirational, Motivational, Special, Taken, Way

I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.

Needs, Rich, Walk, Wealth

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