Quote

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

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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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.
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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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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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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
Alan Bennett
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
Alan Bennett
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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
Alan Bennett
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Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
Alan Bennett
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All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
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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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Alan Bennett
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Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett
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My films are about embarrassment.
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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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
Alan Bennett