We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETTI lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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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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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
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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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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
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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