Alan Bennett

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

— Alan Bennett

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one…

— 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

If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be…

— Alan Bennett

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

— 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

Full-blooded romantic love I wouldn't be able to write about.

— Alan Bennett

Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date.…

— Alan Bennett

I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had…

— Alan Bennett

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as…

— Alan Bennett

Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de…

— 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

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

— Alan Bennett

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense…

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

“TIMMS: I don't see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet. HECTOR: But…

— Alan Bennett

I'd somehow always thought of the classics of literature as something apart from me, something to do with academic life and not…

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.

— Alan Bennett

“I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact…

— Alan Bennett

I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.

— Alan Bennett

The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on…

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett