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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.

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

Happen History Mood Something Subjunctive Use
One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
ALAN BENNETT

Duty Pleasure Public Raed
Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
ALAN BENNETT

Art Begin Come Form Imitate Parofy Process Voice
I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
ALAN BENNETT

Argument Coherent Fallible Good Incoherent Mouth People Play Precise Suit
Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
ALAN BENNETT

Cenotaph Commentary Concern Last Post Realise Something Stuff
However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
ALAN BENNETT

Church Incapable Journey Return Sacrament Weather
You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
ALAN BENNETT

Condition Else Generally Kind Nothing Patient People Remember Wisdom
There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
ALAN BENNETT

Better Play Conscious Film Good No Often Raed Script Such Thing
The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.
ALAN BENNETT

Breed Class Die Good Like Literature never People Practitioner Run School Snobbery Thread Violence
Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
ALAN BENNETT

Glass Life Nobody Other Side Watch Whole
Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
ALAN BENNETT

Education Long Pay Polly Right Sex Socialist
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
ALAN BENNETT

Make Oneself Read Unavailable Withdraw
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETT

Cloth Minister Owner Physician Religion Remember
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Balck Cambridge Contrast Day Fairstory Frost Hard Leed Seem Something Sooty Wonderful
Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
ALAN BENNETT

Chance never Next Now Out Sometimes Time
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETT

Elsewhere Generally Happen Life Something

If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.

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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.

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