Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
ALAN BENNETTBecause 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
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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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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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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 dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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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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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
ALAN BENNETT