We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETTThose who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
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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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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
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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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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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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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Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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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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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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Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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