My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTBut the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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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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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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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Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
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In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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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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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
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I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT