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I Had No Idea Of Who Could Play It, No Notion Really. Then Richard Came To See Us But I Don't Think It Was Decided At That Meeting. The Trouble Is, As Soon As You've Chosen Somebody It Obscures Anybody Else You Might Have Thought Of. It's Like Going To A Place That You've Never Been To Before - You've Got A Picture Of It And Then You Go There And That Picture Is Totally Wiped Out By The Reality.

-Alan Bennett

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I Had No Idea

Alan Bennett

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I Had No Idea Of Who Could Play It, No Notion Really. Then Richard Came To See Us But I Don't Think It Was Decided At That Meeting. The Trouble Is, As Soon As You've Chosen Somebody It Obscures Anybody Else You Might Have Thought Of. It's Like Going To A Place That You've Never Been To Before - You've Got A Picture Of It And Then You Go There And That Picture Is Totally Wiped Out By The Reality.

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Above Literature?' Said The Queen. 'who Is Above Literature? You Might As Well Say One Was Above Humanity.

Never Read The Bible As If It Means Something. Or At Any Rate Don't Try And Mean It. Nor Prayers. The Liturgy Is Best Treated And Read As If It's Someone Announcing The Departure Of Trains.

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.

My Films Are About Embarrassment.

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.

... 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.

I Lack What The English Call Character, By Which They Mean The Power To Refrain.

Have You Ever Thought, Headmaster, That Your Standards Might Perhaps Be A Little Out Of Date? Of Course They're Out Of Date. Standards Are Always Out Of Date.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.

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!

No Mention Of God. They Keep Him Up Their Sleeves For As Long As They Can, Vicars Do. They Know It Puts People Off.

Life Is Generally Something That Happens Elsewhere.

It Was The Kind Of Library He Had Only Read About In Books.

There Is No Such Thing As A Good Script, Onlya Good Film, And I'm Conscious That My Scripts Often Read Better Than They Play.

You Don't Put Your Life Into Your Books, You Find It There.

I Was An Only Child. I Lost Both My Parents. By The Time I Was Twenty I Was Bald. I'm Homosexual. In The Way Of Circumstances And Background To Transcend I Had Everything An Artist Could Possibly Want. It Was Practically A Blueprint.

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.

Of Course My Standards Are Out Of Date! That's Why They're Called Standards.

Remember. You Are A Physician. You Are Not A Policeman Nor Are You A Minister Of Religion. 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. You Have The Knowledge But That Does Not Entitle You To Be Superior. Knowledge Makes You The Servant Not The Master.

One Reads For Pleasure...it Is Not A Public Duty.

I Tried To Explain To Her The Significance Of The Great Poet, But Without Much Success, 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."

Why Do We Not Care To Acknowledge Them? The Cattle, The Body Count. We Still Don't Like To Admit The War Was Even Partly Our Fault Because So Many Of Our People Died. 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. 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.

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.

Kafka Could Never Have Written As He Did Had He Lived In A House. His Writing Is That Of Someone Whose Whole Life Was Spent In Apartments, With Lifts, Stairwells, Muffled Voices Behind Closed Doors, And Sounds Through Walls. Put Him In A Nice Detached Villa And He'd Never Have Written A Word.

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Cancer, Like Any Other Illness, Is A Bore.

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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.

I'm For The Freedom Of Expression, Given That It Will Be Under Strict Control.

Freedom Of Speech

Sometimes There Is No Next Time, No Time-outs, No Second Chances. Sometimes It’s Now Or Never.

Reading Is Untidy, Discursive And Perpetually Inviting.

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.

[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.

If You Think Squash Is A Competitive Activity, Try Flower Arranging.

Mark My Words, When A Society Has To Resort To The Lavatory For Its Humour, The Writing Is On The Wall.

A Book Is A Device To Ignite The Imagination.

Books Are Not About Passing The Time. They're About Other Lives. Other Worlds.

Those Who Have Known The Famous Are Publicly Debriefed Of Their Memories, Knowing As Their Own Dusk Falls That They Will Only Be Remembered For Remembering Someone Else.

But Then Books, As I'm Sure You Know, Seldom Prompt A Course Of Action. Books Generally Just Confirm You In What You Have, Perhaps Unwittingly, Decided To Do Already. You Go To A Book To Have Your Convictions Corroborated. A Book, As It Were, Closes The Book.

Were We Closer To The Ground As Children, Or Is The Grass Emptier Now?

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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.

The Nearest My Parents Came To Alcohol Was At Holy Communion And They Utterly Overestimated Its Effects. However Bad The Weather, Dad Never Drove To Church Because Mam Thought The Sacrament Might Make Him Incapable On The Return Journey.

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So Boring You Fall Asleep Halfway Through Her Name.

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At Eighty Things Do Not Occur; They Recur.

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