Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor. Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a slight Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.
“TIMMS: I don't see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet.HECTOR: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you're dying. We're making your deathbeds here, boys.LOCKWOOD: Fucking Ada.HECTOR: Poetry is the trailer! Forthcoming attractions!”
Alan Bennett
“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. ”
Alan Bennett
“Miss S. bevorzugte das pathetische Wort ‚land’ gegenüber dem üblichen ‚country’. ‚This land …’ In diesem Sinne gebraucht, ist es zwar nicht direkt die Sprache des Wahnsinns, aber doch der Besessenheit. Zeugen Jehovas sprechen ständig von ‚this land’, ebenso die National Front. Land ist gleich country plus Vorsehung – ein Land im Angesicht Gottes. Auch Mrs. Thatcher sagt ‚this land’.”
Alan Bennett
“...But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all.”
Alan Bennett
“How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another”
Alan Bennett
“Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.”
Alan Bennett
“We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.”
Alan Bennett
“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”
Alan Bennett
“Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.”
Alan Bennett
“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”
Alan Bennett
“But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.”
Alan Bennett
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
Alan Bennett
“I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?”
Alan Bennett