Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
ALAN BENNETTOne of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
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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.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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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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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
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My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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It’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the 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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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
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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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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
ALAN BENNETT