The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETTWhat I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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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 generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
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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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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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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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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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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.
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Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
ALAN BENNETT