The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
ALAN BENNETTIf I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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 thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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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.
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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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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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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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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.
ALAN BENNETT