Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
ALAN BENNETTIf I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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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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Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
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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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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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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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In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
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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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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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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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We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
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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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It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
ALAN BENNETT






