It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
ALAN BENNETTYou always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
ALAN BENNETT






