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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

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
Read
Feel
Unavailable
Feels
Withdraw
Make
Selfish
Would
Pursuit
Oneself
Easier
Less

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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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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 longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.
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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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Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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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.
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It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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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.
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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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I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.
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What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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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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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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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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