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.
ALAN BENNETT[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
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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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If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
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I think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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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.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT -
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
ALAN BENNETT