You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
ALAN BENNETTArt 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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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.
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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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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
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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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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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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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