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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.

Alan Bennett

Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
ALAN BENNETT

Assume Bottom Caning Dismiss Disqualify Dream Half Illogically Nation Schoolgirl Shy Work
Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
ALAN BENNETT

Ancient Cold Confuse Country Learn Library Smell Stone
Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
ALAN BENNETT

Country More Pass Time Want Wish
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
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
ALAN BENNETT

Brief Close Down Invite Open Perpetually Raed Subject Up
It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
ALAN BENNETT

Happen History Mood Something Subjunctive Use
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Assure Broadway Exactly Film Instance Made Same Show Understand
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Certain Civilize Education Grant Privilege Seem Society Taken
We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
ALAN BENNETT

Admit Die Fault Many Partly People So Still War
Because 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.
ALAN BENNETT

Cenotaph Commentary Concern Last Post Realise Something Stuff
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETT

Add Ever Headmaster Little might Out Perhaps Standard Thought
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
Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
ALAN BENNETT

Alter Back Dead Front Ground Immediately Look One Past Perspective
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 think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
ALAN BENNETT

Besides Director Down Hierarchy More Piss Place Quite Really Risky Think Took Writer
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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