Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
ALAN BENNETTWe don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.
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Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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The thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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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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The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.
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I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
ALAN BENNETT