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.
ALAN BENNETTHere I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
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My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
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Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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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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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
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And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
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Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
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I think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
ALAN BENNETT