Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
ALAN BENNETTWe still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I’d got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
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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.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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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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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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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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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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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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You 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.
ALAN BENNETT