I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
ALAN BENNETTTo play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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It’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.
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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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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
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A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
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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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The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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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 are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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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 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 have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
ALAN BENNETT






