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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?

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
Saws
Civilization
Streets
Simply
Ends
Someone
Thought
Peeing
Street

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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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.
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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
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[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.
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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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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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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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I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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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 days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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I suppose I'm the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it's the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
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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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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
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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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