We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
ALAN BENNETTI turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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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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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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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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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
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What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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The thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next.
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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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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
ALAN BENNETT






