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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date.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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Alan Bennett
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: May 9
Actor
Comedian
Diarist
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Writer
Course
Headmaster
Makes
Headmasters
Thought
Statistics
Littles
Date
Ever
Standards
Little
Perhaps
Might
Always
Courses

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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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Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
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The thing I think about is that once you've done it, you then start to think about what you're going to do next. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.
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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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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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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.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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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.
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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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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.'
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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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My films are about embarrassment.
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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.
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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!
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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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.
Alan Bennett
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
Alan Bennett
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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