Alan Bennett's Quotes

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

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

I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

My films are about embarrassment.

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.

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

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.