How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another

— Alan Bennett

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.

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me.

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

I think of literature - she wrote - as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

— Alan Bennett

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

— Alan Bennett

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

— Alan Bennett