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Alan Bennett Quotes (1934-)
Actor, Writer, King
About Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, essayist and actor. He first came to notice as a writer-performer of Beyond the Fringe. His plays include Forty Years On, An Englishman Abroad, Talking Heads, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of King George and The History Boys. He also created the sketch comedy On the Margin in 1966 with John Sergeant.
Best Alan Bennett Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Alan Bennett quotes.
“George: I hate them all.”
“Headmaster: Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.”
“Counsel: [You are charged with] loitering to commit a felony. Now then Mr Golightly...”
“To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.”
“That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.”
“"Then I want to end up 'Norwich. Well it's an epigrammatic way of saying 'Knickers off ready when I come home".”
“Schoolmaster: But God, whatever else He is, and of course He is everything else, is not a fool.”
“Headmaster: They were all socialists. Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?”
“He had never read Proust, but he had somehow taken a short cut across the allotments and arrived at the same conclusions.”
“The Channel is a slipper-bath of irony through which we pass these serious Continentals in order not to be infected by their gloom.”
“Lady Dundown: How can the Zulu expect to be treated as civilized people if they declare war in the middle of the season!”
“Brian (asked how he feels about being a politician): Passes the time. Fills in that awkward gap between the cradle and the grave.”
“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.”
“An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail, listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.”
Alan Bennett Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Alan Bennett quotes by topic.
Alan Bennett on Anarchism
Alan Bennett on Espionage
“Because something is not what it is said to be, Ma'am, does not mean it is a fake. It may just have been wrongly attributed.”
Alan Bennett on Mystery fiction
“Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.”
Alan Bennett on History
Alan Bennett on Dogs
“That flaming dog has messed on our steps again. It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing disappear from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhino -- six of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males. Do you know what dogs are? They're those beer-sodden soccer fans piling out of coaches in a lay-by, yanking their cocks out without a blush and pissing up against the wall thirty-nine in a row. I can't stand it.”
What Alan Bennett Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Alan Bennett shared regarding contemporaries.
Alan Bennett on Franz Kafka
“He is interested in the feelings of the squash ball, and of the champagne bottle that launches the ship. In a football match his sympathy is not with either of the teams but with the ball, or, in a match ending nil-nil, with the hunger of the goalmouth.”
About Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, essayist and actor. He first came to notice as a writer-performer of Beyond the Fringe. His plays include Forty Years On, An Englishman Abroad, Talking Heads, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of King George and The History Boys. He also created the sketch comedy On the Margin in 1966 with John Sergeant.