Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
ALAN BENNETTI 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?
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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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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Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
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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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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
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But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
ALAN BENNETT