We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
ALAN BENNETTImagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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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What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
ALAN BENNETT