I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
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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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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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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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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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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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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We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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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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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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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
ALAN BENNETT