Quotes from Alan Bennett

That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

I always feel over-appreciated but underestimated.

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.

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

I have no nickname, as there has never been any need for one.

I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.

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

I do not long for the world as it was when I was a child. I do not long for the person I was in that world. I do not want to be the person I am now in that world then. None of the forms nostalgia can take fits. I found childhood boring. I was glad it was over.

What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

We were all miners in our family. My father was a miner. My mother is a miner. These are miner's hands, but we were all artists, I suppose, really. But I was the first one who had the urge to express myself on paper rather than at the coalface.

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.

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.

Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin

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

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.

My films are about embarrassment.

Sometimes there is no next time, no time outs, no second chances, sometimes it's now or never.