Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
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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[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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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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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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Imagine 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.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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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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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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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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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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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT






