Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
ALAN BENNETTIt [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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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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[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
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A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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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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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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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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