I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
ALAN BENNETTWe have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
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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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Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
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It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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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f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!
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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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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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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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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
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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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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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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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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT