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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

Alan Bennett

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Alan Bennett
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: May 9
Actor
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Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
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More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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.
Alan Bennett
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At eighty things do not occur they recur.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
Alan Bennett
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett
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To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
Alan Bennett
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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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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
Alan Bennett
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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
Alan Bennett
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
Alan Bennett
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
Alan Bennett
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
Alan Bennett
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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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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
Alan Bennett
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
Alan Bennett
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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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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
Alan Bennett
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I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.
Alan Bennett