My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTWe started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
ALAN BENNETT






