Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
ALAN BENNETTClichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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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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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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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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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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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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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
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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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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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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
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We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
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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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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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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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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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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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I can walk. It’s just that I’m so rich I don’t need to.
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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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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
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