That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
ALAN BENNETTI write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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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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But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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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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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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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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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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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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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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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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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
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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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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.
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
ALAN BENNETT