Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
ALAN BENNETTArtists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
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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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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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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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Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.
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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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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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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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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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My films are about embarrassment.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
ALAN BENNETT