It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
ALAN BENNETTWe were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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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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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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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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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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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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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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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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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT