Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.
ALAN BENNETTThey 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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The thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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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.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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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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I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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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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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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