233 Quotes by Alan Bennett

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

But ma’am must have been briefed, surely?’ ‘Of course,’ said the Queen, ’but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

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.

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.

Pass the parcel. That’s sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That’s the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.

I think of literature,′ she wrote, ’as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach. And I have started to late. I will never catch up.

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.

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

Stava anche scoprendo che un libro tira l’altro; ovunque si voltava si aprivano nuove porte e le giornate erano troppo corte per leggere quanto avrebbe voluto. Ma era dispiaciuta, e anche mortificata, al pensiero di tutte le occasioni che si era lasciata sfuggire.