Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETTMemories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
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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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I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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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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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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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
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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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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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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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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.
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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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