It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTSchweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
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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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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
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But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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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’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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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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[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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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!
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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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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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And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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