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…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

Alan Bennett

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.
ALAN BENNETT

Go Like Out Pace Picture Reality Total Wipe
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
His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
ALAN BENNETT

Apartment Door Someone Sound Spent Wall Write
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

Can Coat Culminate Kindly Man Name Prime Minister Say Tell White
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETT

Anarchist Community Obey People Rule Small Start Try
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETT

Add Ever Headmaster Little might Out Perhaps Standard Thought
God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
ALAN BENNETT

Either Excuse God Jesus Christ Mote
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
ALAN BENNETT

Bookshelf Library Particular People Perform Stamp
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Crise Majority People Perform Spotlight Them
It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETT

Been Cambridge Grail Holy never Sense
Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
ALAN BENNETT

Book Bought Finish Once Start Way
[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
ALAN BENNETT

Antithesis Brief Fact Factual Point Raed Terse
I think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
ALAN BENNETT

Blue Eye Live Perhaps Remind Think
The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.
ALAN BENNETT

Breed Class Die Good Like Literature never People Practitioner Run School Snobbery Thread Violence
…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
ALAN BENNETT

Chosen Felt Impossible Late Read She Stage Writer
Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT

Always Date Makem Standard Standard

…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

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…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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