233 Quotes by Alan Bennett

Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?

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.

Unlike today’s ideologues, whom I would call single-minded if mind came into it at all, I have no fear of the state.

I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.

The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it.

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.′ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.

It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.

I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.