233 Quotes by 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 is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.

Still as I’ve said all along, you can’t polish a turd.

Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.

The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.

Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else.

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

Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

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

Never at my best when at my best behaviour.