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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.

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
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Turned
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Every
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Knighthood

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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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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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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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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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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One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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
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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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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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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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I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.
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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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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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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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I've never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin. The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
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