Quote

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.

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
Life
Primarily
Substance
Suppose
Concerned
Taking
Reality
Work
Really
Pith

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
Alan Bennett
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
Alan Bennett
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Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.
Alan Bennett
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
Alan Bennett
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Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.
Alan Bennett
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
Alan Bennett
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
Alan Bennett
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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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
Alan Bennett
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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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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he'd never have written a word.
Alan Bennett
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
Alan Bennett
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To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
Alan Bennett
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
Alan Bennett
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My films are about embarrassment.
Alan Bennett