Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
ALAN BENNETTDefinition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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.
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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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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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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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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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