Quote

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.

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
Best
Treated
Mean
Rate
Trying
Bible
Something
Train
Liturgy
Never
Prayer
Announcing
Read
Trains
Means
Departure
Someone
Prayers

More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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.
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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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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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 write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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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.
Alan Bennett
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I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.
Alan Bennett
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
Alan Bennett
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What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
Alan Bennett
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he'd never have written a word.
Alan Bennett
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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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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.
Alan Bennett
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
Alan Bennett
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
Alan Bennett
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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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I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett
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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!
Alan Bennett
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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
Alan Bennett
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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.
Alan Bennett