Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
ALAN BENNETTIt’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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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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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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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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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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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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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETT