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 BENNETTAn article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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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.
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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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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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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My experience came before most of you were born.
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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.
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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETT