What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling.… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line! — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
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… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people. — Alan Bennett Copy Share
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… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
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… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really. — Alan Bennett Copy Share
Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten. They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
“BURGESS How do you like Moscow? CORAL Loathe it, darling. I cannot understand what those Three Sisters were on about. It gives the play… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching. — Alan Bennett Copy Share
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them… — Alan Bennett Copy Share
