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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

Alan Bennett

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

Happen History Mood Something Subjunctive Use
However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
ALAN BENNETT

Church Incapable Journey Return Sacrament Weather
Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
ALAN BENNETT

Book Commonwealth Equal Herself Literature Read Reader Republic
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Down Mean No Past Period Recent Remote See
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Another Book Endlessness Idea Lead Outface Raed Same Sheer System Time
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Author Best Character Creature Decide Imagination Met Much Novel Page Probably Reader Soon
But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
ALAN BENNETT

Men Most Poem Regard Threaten Women
I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
ALAN BENNETT

Left Male National Park Serengeti White Wish
It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
ALAN BENNETT

Been Easie Follow Much Something Successful
I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
ALAN BENNETT

Besides Director Down Hierarchy More Piss Place Quite Really Risky Think Took Writer
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Between Bit Boy Chat Counter Fish Fryer Local Sale Some Under
One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
ALAN BENNETT

Duty Pleasure Public Raed
A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
ALAN BENNETT

Every Forget Lest Mantlepiece Mourn Much Photograph Remember Veiled
Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
ALAN BENNETT

Detach Have Him never Nice Put Villa Word Write
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

Done Kindness Nor Read Seem Think Write
We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
ALAN BENNETT

Chip Fetch Fish Market Place Settle Shop

Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

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