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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

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
Emptier
Closer
Grass
Ground
Children

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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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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
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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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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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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.
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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.
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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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What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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...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.
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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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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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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
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I suppose I'm the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it's the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
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