Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
ALAN BENNETTCulminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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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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Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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Here 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
ALAN BENNETT