Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
ALAN BENNETTAt the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
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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.
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It’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.
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I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
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A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
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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.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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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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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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