Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
ALAN BENNETTNever read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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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.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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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.
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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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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETT