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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.

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
Nobody
Either
Irwin
Idea
Hector
Experience
Exam
School
Scholarship
Ideas
Expected
Really
Forgotten
Never
Masters

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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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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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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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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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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.
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My films are about embarrassment.
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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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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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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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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
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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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It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
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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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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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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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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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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.
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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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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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