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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.

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
Lives
Wishes
Wanted
Passings
Book
Worlds
Time
Wanting
World
Passing
Pass
Books
Zealand
Wish
Hobbies

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
Alan Bennett
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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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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.
Alan Bennett
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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
Alan Bennett
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Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.
Alan Bennett
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
Alan Bennett
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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.
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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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
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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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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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.
Alan Bennett
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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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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Alan Bennett
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
Alan Bennett
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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
Alan Bennett
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
Alan Bennett