Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
ALAN BENNETTI think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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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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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.
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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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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
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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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Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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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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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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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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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
ALAN BENNETT