black
grey
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And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

Alan Bennett

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
ALAN BENNETT

Cloth Minister Owner Physician Religion Remember
I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
ALAN BENNETT

Civilization Day End Know Other Pee Somebody Thought
All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I’d got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
ALAN BENNETT

All Effort Left Nothing Went
Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
ALAN BENNETT

Cheer Himself I Lok Mirror Now People Skyline Use Winter
It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
ALAN BENNETT

Happen History Mood Something Subjunctive Use
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Adjustment Fact Lady Little Made Some Substance Through Van
I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
ALAN BENNETT

Happy Unhappy
Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
ALAN BENNETT

Cruel Give Nature Paly Trick Waxed
Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
ALAN BENNETT

Glass Life Nobody Other Side Watch Whole
My films are about embarrassment.
ALAN BENNETT

Embarrassment Film
One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
ALAN BENNETT

Hardest Human One Learn Teacher Thing
The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.
ALAN BENNETT

Breed Class Die Good Like Literature never People Practitioner Run School Snobbery Thread Violence
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Anyway Found More Take Talk Time Well Write
If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
ALAN BENNETT

Do Leisure Mean Nothing Purpose Some
Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETT

Children Closer Empire Grass Ground Now
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
ALAN BENNETT

Assume Book Classic Definition Everyone Often Read Think
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
ALAN BENNETT

Alone Cistern Cold Full Loud Seat Sit Sixty
Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
ALAN BENNETT

Above Humanity Literature might One Queen Said Well
It’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.
ALAN BENNETT

Go Like Out Pace Picture Reality Total Wipe
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
ALAN BENNETT

Appear Indifference Literature Read Something Through Underfy
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
ALAN BENNETT

Elsewhere Generally Happen Life Something
The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
ALAN BENNETT

Busk Exam Expect Ide Master Really Scholarship
Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
ALAN BENNETT

House Live never Write
Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETT

Al Box Life Look Sadness Sky
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Balck Cambridge Contrast Day Fairstory Frost Hard Leed Seem Something Sooty Wonderful
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Certain Civilize Education Grant Privilege Seem Society Taken
And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
ALAN BENNETT

Away Can Distance Explain History Yourself

And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

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And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

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Popular Authors

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