[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
ALAN BENNETTBut 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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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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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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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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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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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT