Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETTIt’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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[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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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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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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The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
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We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
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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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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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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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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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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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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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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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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
ALAN BENNETT