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Deluded Liberal That I Am, I Persist In Thinking That Those With A Streak Of Sexual Unorthodoxy Ought To Be More Tolerant Of Their Fellows Than Those Who Lead An Entirely Godly, Righteous And Sober Life. 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.

-Alan Bennett

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Deluded Liberal That I

Alan Bennett

...

Deluded Liberal That I Am, I Persist In Thinking That Those With A Streak Of Sexual Unorthodoxy Ought To Be More Tolerant Of Their Fellows Than Those Who Lead An Entirely Godly, Righteous And Sober Life. 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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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. The Trouble Is, As Soon As You've Chosen Somebody It Obscures Anybody Else You Might Have Thought Of. It's Like Going To A Place That You've Never Been To Before - You've Got A Picture Of It And Then You Go There And That Picture Is Totally Wiped Out By The Reality.

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Cancer Survivor

The Days Weren't Long Enough For The Reading She Wanted To Do.

If I Am Doing Nothing, I Like To Be Doing Nothing To Some Purpose. That Is What Leisure Means.

Above Literature?' Said The Queen. 'who Is Above Literature? You Might As Well Say One Was Above Humanity.

The Appeal Of Reading, She Thought, Lay In Its Indifference: There Was Something Undeferring About Literature. Books Did Not Care Who Was Reading Them Or Whether One Read Them Or Not. All Readers Were Equal, Herself Included. Literature, She Thought, Is A Commonwealth; Letters A Republic.

I Think The Writer's Quite Low Down In The Hierarchy Really. But The Fact That They Took The Piss Out Of Nicholas [hynter] Who, Besides Being The Director, Is Also Director Of The National Theatre Is, I'd Have Thought, Slightly More Risky.

One Reads For Pleasure...it Is Not A Public Duty.

You Don't Put Your Life Into Your Books, You Find It There.

I'm For The Freedom Of Expression, Given That It Will Be Under Strict Control.

Freedom Of Speech

Our Father The Novelist; My Husband The Poet. He Belongs To The Ages - Just Don't Catch Him At Breakfast. Artists, Celebrated For Their Humanity, They Turn Out To Be Scarcely Human At All.

But Most Men Regard Their Life As A Poem That Women Threaten. They May Not Have Two Spondees To Rub Together But They Still Want To Pen Their Saga Untrammelled By Life-threatening Activities Like Trailing Round Sainsbury's, Emptying The Dishwasher Or Going To The Nativity Play.

That's A Bit Like Asking A Man Crawling Across The Sahara Whether He Would Prefer Perrier Or Malvern Water.

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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.

So Boring You Fall Asleep Halfway Through Her Name.

Standards Are Always Out Of Date. That's What Makes Them Standards.

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. Over The Years Miss Shepherd Was Visited By A Succession Of Social Workers So The Character In The Play Is A Composite Figure. . . . A Composite Too Are The Neighbours, Pauline And Rufus, Though I Have Made Rufus A Publisher In Remembrance Of My Neighbour, The Late Colin Haycraft, The Proprietor Of Duckworth's.

My Films Are About Embarrassment.

Memories Are Not Shackles, Franklin, They Are Garlands.

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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.

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.

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?

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There Is No Such Thing As A Good Script, Onlya Good Film, And I'm Conscious That My Scripts Often Read Better Than They Play.

We Started Off Trying To Set Up A Small Anarchist Community, But People Wouldn't Obey The Rules.

The Best Moments In Reading Are When You Come Across Something - A Thought, A Feeling, A Way Of Looking At Things - Which You Had Thought Special And Particular To You. And Now, Here It Is, Set Down By Someone Else, A Person You Have Never Met, Someone Even Who Is Long Dead. And It Is As If A Hand Has Come Out, And Taken Yours

I've Never Seen The Point Of The Sea, Except Where It Meets The Land. The Shore Has A Point. The Sea Has None.

Philip Larkin Used To Cheer Himself Up By Looking In The Mirror And Saying The Line From Rebecca, 'i Am Mrs De Winter Now!

... Once I Start A Book I Finish It. That Was The Way One Was Brought Up. Books, Bread And Butter, Mashed Potato - One Finishes What's On One's Plate. That's Always Been My Philosophy.

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Your Whole Life Is On The Other Side Of The Glass. And There Is Nobody Watching.

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It Was The Kind Of Library He Had Only Read About In Books.

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