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My films are about embarrassment.

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
Embarrassment
Films
Film

More quotes by 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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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
Alan Bennett
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett
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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
Alan Bennett
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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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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
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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.
Alan Bennett
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The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
Alan Bennett
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But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.
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
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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.
Alan Bennett
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It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
Alan Bennett
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Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
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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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
Alan Bennett
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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
Alan Bennett
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
Alan Bennett
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I dont know whether you've ever looked into a miner's eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you've ever seen. I think perhaps that's why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett