Quote

It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

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
Mood
Happened
History
Used
May
Something
Subjunctive
Imagined

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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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.
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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.
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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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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.
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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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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.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth letters a republic.
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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. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.
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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
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Our father the novelist my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
Alan Bennett
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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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. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
Alan Bennett
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten. They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury's, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
Alan Bennett
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
Alan Bennett
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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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!
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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