Quote

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

Alan Bennett

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Alan Bennett
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: May 9
Actor
Comedian
Diarist
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Writer
Human
Humans
Trying
Things
Hardest
Boys
Teacher
Learn
Tell

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.'
Alan Bennett
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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
Alan Bennett
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Art comes out of art it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.
Alan Bennett
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I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
Alan Bennett
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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
Alan Bennett
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Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
Alan Bennett
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
Alan Bennett
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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
Alan Bennett
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...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
Alan Bennett
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Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
Alan Bennett
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It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. 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
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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.
Alan Bennett
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
Alan Bennett
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f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!
Alan Bennett
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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
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... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.
Alan Bennett
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
Alan Bennett
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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. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.
Alan Bennett