If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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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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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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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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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
ALAN BENNETT