Alan Bennett

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

— Alan Bennett

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

— Alan Bennett

Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.

— Alan Bennett

“I suppose everyone gets written about sooner or later.”

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

“The closest she got to pretence was politeness.”

— Alan Bennett

“How old does one have to be still to say tits?”

— Alan Bennett

Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I…

— Alan Bennett

I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.

— Alan Bennett

I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.

— Alan Bennett

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.

— Alan Bennett

I'm less genial than people think, but I'm too timid to seem nasty.

— Alan Bennett

I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really.

— Alan Bennett

I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.

— Alan Bennett

“it is seldom at the frontier that discoveries are made but more often in the dustbin.”

— Alan Bennett

“Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the…

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed…

— Alan Bennett

“Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the…

— Alan Bennett

“the more institutions and freedoms and benefits one can take for granted – of which in my view free state-supported galleries and…

— Alan Bennett

“I don't always understand poetry!' 'You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now…

— Alan Bennett

The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the…

— 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…

— 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…

— Alan Bennett

“It was almost a side-effect that this caused me to educate myself to a degree which was beyond anything a school could…

— Alan Bennett

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down…

— Alan Bennett

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things…

— Alan Bennett

My experience came before most of you were born. My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent…

— Alan Bennett

“and when Mrs Thatcher came to the college for a scientific symposium Tyson was deputed to take her round the Common Room.…

— Alan Bennett

“IRWIN: At the time of the Reformation there were fourteen foreskins of Christ preserved, but it was thought that the church of…

— 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…

— Alan Bennett

“May 1976. I have had some manure delivered for the garden and, since the manure heap is not far from the van,…

— Alan Bennett

“Arriving at the hotel, like leaving it, was fraught with anxiety: there was always the question of ‘the tip’. Dad would probably…

— Alan Bennett

“Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film.…

— Alan Bennett

“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was…

— Alan Bennett

[talking about the Holocaust] 'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it…

— Alan Bennett

“Kids who read become students who do well in school. Students who do well in school go to college. College students graduate…

— Alan Bennett

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

— Alan Bennett

So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.

— Alan Bennett