It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTThere’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I can walk. It’s just that I’m so rich I don’t need to.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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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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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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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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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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But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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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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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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Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT