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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
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Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Writer
Felt
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Others
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Impossible
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More quotes by Alan Bennett
To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan Bennett
One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
Alan Bennett
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
You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
Alan Bennett
That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
Alan Bennett
I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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.
Alan Bennett
Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
Alan Bennett
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
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
... 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
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
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Alan Bennett
It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
Alan Bennett
f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!
Alan Bennett
At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.'
Alan Bennett
God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
Alan Bennett
The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
Alan Bennett
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.
Alan Bennett
My films are about embarrassment.
Alan Bennett