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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

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
Smell
Library
Stones
Ancient
Cold
Cloisters
Learning
Libraries
Confusing
Stone

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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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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.
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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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.
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If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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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.
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Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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