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
May
Something
Subjunctive
Imagined
Mood
Happened
History
Used

More quotes by 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.
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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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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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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.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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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've never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin. The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
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I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky.
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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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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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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.
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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.
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