Alan Bennett Quotes

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Alan Bennett

Profession : Dramatist

Birth : May 9, 1934

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Alan Bennett

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

Alan Bennett

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

Alan Bennett

Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up.

Alan Bennett

I'm less genial than people think, but I'm too timid to seem nasty.

Alan Bennett

I've been very lucky in everything, really - in my career and in finding someone to share my life with, and in not dying.

Alan Bennett

I can't complain that I've had a public all through my writing life, but people don't quite know what I've written. People don't read you too closely. Perhaps, after I've died, they'll look at my stuff, and read it through, and find there's more in it. That may be wrong, but that's what I comfort myself with.

Alan Bennett

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.

Alan Bennett

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

Alan Bennett

I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really.

Alan Bennett

I always feel over-appreciated but underestimated.

Alan Bennett

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

Alan Bennett

I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.

Alan Bennett