Quote

Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter 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
Used
Depression
Mirror
Mirrors
Winter
Line
Larkin
Saying
Rebecca
Lines
Philip
Looking
Cheer

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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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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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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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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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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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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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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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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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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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