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There Are More Microbes Per Person Than The Entire Population Of The World. Imagine That. Per Person. This Means That If The Time Scale Is Diminished In Proportion To That Of Space It Would Be Quite Possible For The Whole Story Of Greece And Rome To Be Played Out Between Farts.

-Alan Bennett

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There Are More Microbes

Alan Bennett

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There Are More Microbes Per Person Than The Entire Population Of The World. Imagine That. Per Person. This Means That If The Time Scale Is Diminished In Proportion To That Of Space It Would Be Quite Possible For The Whole Story Of Greece And Rome To Be Played Out Between Farts.

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God Doesn't Do Notes, Either. Did Jesus Christ Say, "can I Be Excused The Crucifixion?" No!

We Have Fish And Chips, Which W. And I Fetch From The Shop In Settle Market-place. 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. Only When I Mention It To W. Does He Explain Kestrel Is Now A Lager. I Imagine The Future Is Going To Contain An Increasing Number Of Incidents Like This, Culminating With A Man In A White Coat Saying To One Kindly, "and Now Can You Tell Me The Name Of The Prime Minister?"

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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.

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.

It's Subjunctive History. You Know, The Subjunctive? The Mood Used When Something May Or May Not Have Happened. When It Is Imagined.

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[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. And If It Can Be Explained That It Can Be Explained Away.' 'but This Is History. Distance Yourselves. Our Perspective On The Past Alters. Looking Back, Immediately In Front Of Us Is Dead Ground. We Don't See It, And Because We Don't See It This Means That There Is No Period So Remote As The Recent Past. And One Of The Historian's Jobs Is To Anticipate What Our Perspective Of That Period Will Be... Even On The Holocaust.

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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!

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.

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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?

So Boring You Fall Asleep Halfway Through Her Name.

Standards Are Always Out Of Date. That's What Makes Them Standards.

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

Had Your Forefathers, Wigglesworth, Been As Stupid As You Are, The Human Race Would Never Have Succeeded In Procreating Itself.

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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Freedom Of Speech

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