I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
ALAN BENNETTThe 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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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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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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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.
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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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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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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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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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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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
ALAN BENNETT