Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
ALAN BENNETTYou must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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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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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
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We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
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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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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
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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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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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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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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT