It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
ALAN BENNETTI wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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I can walk. It’s just that I’m so rich I don’t need to.
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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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Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
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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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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.
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The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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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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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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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 Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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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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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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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What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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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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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
ALAN BENNETT