Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETTSchweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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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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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.
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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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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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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What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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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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Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
ALAN BENNETT