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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
Awards
Suits
Turned
Wear
Every
Would
Life
Knighthood
Like
Suit

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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.
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All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
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I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.
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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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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
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My films are about embarrassment.
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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.
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Art comes out of art it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.
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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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If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.
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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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My films are about embarrassment.
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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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 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.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
Alan Bennett