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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

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
Thinking
Squash
Arranging
Competitive
Flower
Activity
Trying
Think

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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.
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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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'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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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.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!
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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
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What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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