Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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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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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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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It’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.
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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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[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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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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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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Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
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Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
ALAN BENNETT