I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
ALAN BENNETTOne of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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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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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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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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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 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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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
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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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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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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
ALAN BENNETT