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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.

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
Moral
Living
Schweitzer
Larkin
Hull
Congo
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Credit

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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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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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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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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
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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 write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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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I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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