At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETTHis writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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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.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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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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We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
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The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
ALAN BENNETT