You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
ALAN BENNETT…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
ALAN BENNETT -
…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
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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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The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
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Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETT