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

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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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My films are about embarrassment.
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...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
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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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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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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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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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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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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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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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I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
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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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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.
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