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
Mirrors
Winter
Line
Larkin
Saying
Rebecca
Lines
Philip
Looking
Cheer
Used
Depression
Mirror

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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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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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Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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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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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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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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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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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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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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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
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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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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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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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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
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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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