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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

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
Took
Humanity
Quite
Children
Never
Unremitting
Cheesy
Dickens
Soon

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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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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The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
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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'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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I dont know whether you've ever looked into a miner's eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you've ever seen. I think perhaps that's why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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