Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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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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Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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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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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT