Art & Creativity Quote by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett’s best work has always treated certainty as suspect, and this line is practically a mission statement for that temperament. He’s not presenting playwriting as a megaphone for beliefs but as a diagnostic tool: a way to prod at the private knots that refuse to come loose. “Can’t resolve in my mind” frames the stage as a holding pen for contradictions rather than a courtroom for verdicts. The dramatist isn’t above the mess; he’s inside it, using dialogue, timing, and embarrassment as instruments of thought.

The phrase “root things out” does double duty. It sounds brisk, almost domestic, like weeding a garden or clearing a cupboard, which is classic Bennett: the modest, English surface masking something more invasive. Rooting out suggests that the problem isn’t an abstract idea but something entrenched in the self, in habit, in class reflex, in the stories a culture tells itself to stay comfortable. His plays often turn on that exact pressure point: the polite social script cracking under unspoken desire, shame, or moral compromise.

Context matters here. Bennett emerged from a postwar Britain steeped in deference and quiet hypocrisy, then watched it modernize, liberalize, and forget its own bargains. His drama thrives on the comedy of restraint and the ache beneath it. The intent isn’t to tidy the mind; it’s to make unresolved tensions legible in public, so an audience can recognize their own evasions and maybe stop pretending they’re “sorted.”