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.
ALAN BENNETTIt’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
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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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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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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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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT