Alan Bennett
English playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, essayist and actor.
The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
I have no doubt that in heaven the angels will regard the blessed as a necessary evil.
"Then I want to end up 'Norwich. Well it's an epigrammatic way of saying 'Knickers off ready when I come home."
Headmaster: Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
Golightly: Call me Fingers.
Franklin: Have you ever thought, Headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
Headmaster: Of course they're out of date. Standards always are out of date. That is what makes them standards.