The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
ALAN BENNETTI lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
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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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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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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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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
ALAN BENNETT