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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.

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
Confirm
Perhaps
Closes
Already
Prompts
Courses
Convictions
Course
Seldom
Books
Conviction
Sure
Generally
Unwittingly
Action
Prompt
Book
Decided

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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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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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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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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Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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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.
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.
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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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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.
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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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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Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
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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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That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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