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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.

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
Time
Didn
Also
Wells
Anyway
Book
Talk
Well
Less
Right
Language
Writing
Write
Would
Found

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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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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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Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
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I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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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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Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
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Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
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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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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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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
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Art comes out of art it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten. They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury's, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!
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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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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
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