It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
ALAN BENNETTI was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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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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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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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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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
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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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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
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f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!
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Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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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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