Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
ALAN BENNETTIf you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
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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 trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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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.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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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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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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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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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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