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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.

Alan Bennett

[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.
ALAN BENNETT

Context Explain Holocaust Say Something Step Talking Toward Understand
Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
ALAN BENNETT

Can Coat Culminate Kindly Man Name Prime Minister Say Tell White
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
ALAN BENNETT

Discursive Invite Perpetual Raed Untidy
I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
ALAN BENNETT

Argument Coherent Fallible Good Incoherent Mouth People Play Precise Suit
Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT

Always Course Date Make Out Standard
At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT

Eighty Occur Recur Thing
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
ALAN BENNETT

Make Oneself Read Unavailable Withdraw
Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
ALAN BENNETT

Else Fall Know Own Remember Something Sudk
What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETT

Another Book Door Find Kept Open Process Turn
Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
ALAN BENNETT

Ancient Cold Confuse Country Learn Library Smell Stone
I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
ALAN BENNETT

Nijinsky Ballet Collaboration Excite Fruit More Only Person Remember Suppose Unlikely
My experience came before most of you were born.
ALAN BENNETT

Before Born Came Experience
If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.
ALAN BENNETT

Assure Broadway Exactly Film Instance Made Same Show Understand
Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
ALAN BENNETT

Cenotaph Commentary Concern Last Post Realise Something Stuff
The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
ALAN BENNETT

Announce Best Departure Liturgy Rad Someone Train Treat
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Every Forget Lest Mantlepiece Mourn Much Photograph Remember Veiled
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Condition Else Generally Kind Nothing Patient People Remember Wisdom
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Case Convince Involve Longer Medicine More Practice Trouser Two Type
Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
ALAN BENNETT

Character Composite Figure Over People Play Social Succession Visit Worker Year
Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
ALAN BENNETT

Between Bit Boy Chat Counter Fish Fryer Local Sale Some Under
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
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
Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETT

Call Course Date Out Standard
A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
ALAN BENNETT

Proprietor Composite Made Neighbour People Publisher Remembrance Though Too
I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
ALAN BENNETT

Except Land Meet never Point Sea Seen Shore
An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left,
ALAN BENNETT

According Article Daily Hard Left List Mall Playwright
The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
ALAN BENNETT

Crise Majority People Perform Spotlight Them

The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.

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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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