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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.

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
Impossible
Reading
Read
Write
Felt
Chosen
Others
Writers
Writing
Late
Life
Stage

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's someone announcing the departure of trains.
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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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
Alan Bennett
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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
Alan Bennett
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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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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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.
Alan Bennett
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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
Alan Bennett
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My films are about embarrassment.
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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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he'd never have written a word.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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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
Alan Bennett
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... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.
Alan Bennett
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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!
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