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Alan Bennett Quotes
born 1934 England
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, essayist and actor. He first came to notice as a writer-performer of Beyond the Fringe.
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30 quotes
Headmaster: Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
Forty Years On (1969)
An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail, listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
Writing Home (1994)
"Then I want to end up 'Norwich. Well it's an epigrammatic way of saying 'Knickers off ready when I come home".
On the Margin (1966)
Writer: What, above all, I'm primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, that's it, really. I'm taking the pith out of reality.
Writing Home (1994)
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.
Writing Home (1994)
Lady Dundown: How can the Zulu expect to be treated as civilized people if they declare war in the middle of the season!
Forty Years On (1969)
One of the good things about Larkin is that he still has you firmly by the hand as you cross the finishing-line, whereas reading Auden is like doing a parachute-drop: for a while the view is wonderful, but then you end up on your back in the middle of a ploughed field and in the wrong county.
Writing Home (1994)
Mrs Wicksteed: Of course, I've known for years our marriage has been a mockery. My body lying there night after night in the wasted moonlight. I know now how the Taj Mahal must feel.
Habeas Corpus (1973)
However, living in Tel Aviv, he was spared the fate of equivalent figures in English culture, an endless round of arts programmes where those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will be remembered only for remembering someone else.
Writing Home (1994)
Polly: Question is whether you hate the coach party because they're like the dogs or hate the dogs because they're like the coach party.
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