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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

Alan Bennett

Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETT

Age Belong Breakfast Catch Father Husband Novelist Poet
And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
ALAN BENNETT

Away Can Distance Explain History Yourself
What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
ALAN BENNETT

Above Concern Pith Primarily Reality Substance
A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
ALAN BENNETT

Proprietor Composite Made Neighbour People Publisher Remembrance Though Too
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Bent Block Coat Drabber Excrement Hanger Insane Life Moment Root Some Step Swill
The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.
ALAN BENNETT

Breed Class Die Good Like Literature never People Practitioner Run School Snobbery Thread Violence
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
ALAN BENNETT

Come Dead Down Hand Long Person Set Someone Your
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETT

Cloth Minister Owner Physician Religion Remember
[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
ALAN BENNETT

Antithesis Brief Fact Factual Point Raed Terse
Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
ALAN BENNETT

Come Hard Left List Probably Right Soft Under
I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
ALAN BENNETT

Either Experience Forgotten Like Nobody People School
[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.
ALAN BENNETT

Context Explain Holocaust Say Something Step Talking Toward Understand
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Dozen Eventually Experience Extent Half History Own Try
The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
ALAN BENNETT

Crise Majority People Perform Spotlight Them
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
ALAN BENNETT

Humour Lavatory Mark Resort Society Wall Word Write
I think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
ALAN BENNETT

Blue Eye Live Perhaps Remind Think

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

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