Quote

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

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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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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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The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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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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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.
Alan Bennett
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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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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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.'
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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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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
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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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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
Alan Bennett
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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
Alan Bennett
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
Alan Bennett