Skip to content

Headmaster: Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

— Alan Bennett Forty Years On (1969)

Another quote →

Topics

Writing

More quotes by Alan Bennett

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.

Writing Home (1994)

I have no doubt that in heaven the angels will regard the blessed as a necessary evil.

Writing Home (1994)

I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.

An Englishman Abroad (1983)

The Channel is a slipper-bath of irony through which we pass these serious Continentals in order not to be infected by their gloom.

Writing Home (1994)

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.

Writing Home (1994)

All Alan Bennett quotes →

You may also like

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

Suman Pokhrel

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alan Bennett (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.