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The Breed never dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery withViolence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.

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
School
Twentieth
Good
Thread
Never
Runs
Like
Century
Sappers
Class
Tweed
Literature
Practitioners
Dies
Snobbery
Running
Breed

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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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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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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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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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Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
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I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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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.
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I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
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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.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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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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The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!
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