Alan Bennett Quotes

Counsel: [You are charged with] loitering to commit a felony. Now then Mr Golightly...

Brian (asked how he feels about being a politician): Passes the time. Fills in that awkward gap between the cradle and the grave.

One of the good things about Larkin is that he still has you firmly by the hand as you cross the finishing-line, whereas reading Auden is like doing a parachute-drop: for a while the view is wonderful, but then you end up on your back in the middle of a ploughed field and in the wrong county.

Lady Dundown: I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Mrs Wicksteed: Of course, I've known for years our marriage has been a mockery. My body lying there night after night in the wasted moonlight. I know now how the Taj Mahal must feel.

If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.

Schoolmaster: But God, whatever else He is, and of course He is everything else, is not a fool.

Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.