I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
ALAN BENNETTCloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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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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Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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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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My films are about embarrassment.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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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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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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Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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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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I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
ALAN BENNETT