Quote

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.'

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
Like
Instance
Blocked
Thoughts
Coat
Steps
Toms
Hanger
Doubt
Coats
Excrement
Doesn
Sink
Hangers
Moments
Occur
Rooting
Would
David
Hare
Life
Bent
Hares

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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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I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
Alan Bennett
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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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My films are about embarrassment.
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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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.
Alan Bennett
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
Alan Bennett
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My films are about embarrassment.
Alan Bennett
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
Alan Bennett
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett
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Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
Alan Bennett
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Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
Alan Bennett