There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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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I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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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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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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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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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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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
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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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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETT






