I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Alan Bennett

Categorized in : War Scope Instinct

I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a sui... by Alan Bennett

I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.

knighthood awards would-be

No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.

vicars long people

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. by Alan Bennett

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

inviting briefing reading

There's very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made. Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure. . . . A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth's.

play character years

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.

collaboration ballet hands

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do. by Alan Bennett

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

reading enough long

The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.

dad journey weather

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

assuming parent children

... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.

philosophy book way

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.

safety taken civilization

My experience came before most of you were born. My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn't normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge. But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge. So, half a dozen of us tried - not all of us in history - and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.

oxford boys school

It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

mood used may

Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as lon... by Alan Bennett

Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.

pay long sex

Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!

cheer winter depression

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

cheesy humanity children

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés. by Alan Bennett

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.

fun

I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.

mouths play people

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it. by Alan Bennett

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.

not-happy contentment unhappy

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be... by Alan Bennett

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.

pursuit form play

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.

medicine two science