Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
ALAN BENNETTWe were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
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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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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
ALAN BENNETT -
The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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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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I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
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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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The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
ALAN BENNETT