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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. 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.

-Alan Bennett

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There's Very Little In

Alan Bennett

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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. 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.

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Reading Is Untidy, Discursive And Perpetually Inviting.

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.

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

Polly: Education With Socialists, It's Like Sex, All Right As Long As You Don't Have To Pay For It.

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.

I Dont Know Whether You've Ever Looked Into A Miner's Eyes For Any Length Of Time, That Is. Because It Is The Loveliest Blue You've Ever Seen. I Think Perhaps That's Why I Live In Ibiza, Because The Blue Of The Mediterranean, You See, Reminds Me Of The Blue Of The Eyes Of Those Doncaster Miners.

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.

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.

If You Think Squash Is A Competitive Activity, Try Flower Arranging.

Standards Are Always Out Of Date.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

I Can Walk. It's Just That I'm So Rich I Don't Need To.

I'm Not Good At Precise, Coherent Argument. But Plays Are Suited To Incoherent Argument, Put Into The Mouths Of Fallible People.

The Breed Never Dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, Practitioners In That School Of Snobbery Withviolence That Runs Like A Thread Of Good-class Tweed Through Twentieth-century Literature.

Had Your Forefathers, Wigglesworth, Been As Stupid As You Are, The Human Race Would Never Have Succeeded In Procreating Itself.

We Have Fish And Chips, Which W. And I Fetch From The Shop In Settle Market-place. Some Local Boys Come In And There Is A Bit Of Chat Between Them And The Fish-fryer About Whether The Kestrel Under The Counter Is For Sale. Only When I Mention It To W. Does He Explain Kestrel Is Now A Lager. I Imagine The Future Is Going To Contain An Increasing Number Of Incidents Like This, Culminating With A Man In A White Coat Saying To One Kindly, "and Now Can You Tell Me The Name Of The Prime Minister?"

I Turned Down A Knighthood. It Would Be Like Having To Wear A Suit Every Day Of Your Life.

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

My Experience Came Before Most Of You Were Born. My School Was A State School In Leeds And The Headmaster Usually Sent Students To Leeds University But He Didn't Normally Send Them To Oxford Or Cambridge. But The Headmaster Happened To Have Been To Cambridge And Decided To Try And Push Some Of Us Towards Oxford And Cambridge. So, Half A Dozen Of Us Tried - Not All Of Us In History - And We All Eventually Got In. So, To That Extent, It [the History Boys] Comes Out Of My Own Experience.

My Films Are About Embarrassment.

Here I Sit, Alone At 60, Bald And Fat And Full Of Sin Cold The Seat, And Loud The Cistern As I Read The (harpic) (lysol) Tin

I Lack What The English Call Character, By Which They Mean The Power To Refrain.

The Majority Of People Perform Well In A Crisis And When The Spotlight Is On Them; It's On The Sunday Afternoons Of This Life, When Nobody Is Looking, That The Spirit Falters.

Cloisters, Ancient Libraries ... I Was Confusing Learning With The Smell Of Cold Stone.

I Have Never Understood Disliking For War. It Panders To Instincts Already Catered For Within The Scope Of Any Respectable Domestic Establishment.

A Bookshelf Is As Particular To Its Owner As Are His Or Her Clothes; A Personality Is Stamped On A Library Just As A Shoe Is Shaped By The Foot.

To Read Is To Withdraw.to Make Oneself Unavailable. One Would Feel Easier About It If The Pursuit Inself Were Less...selfish.

I'm All In Favour Of Free Expression Provided It's Kept Rigidly Under Control.

A Book Is A Device To Ignite The Imagination.

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.

It [cambridge] Wasn't A Holy Grail In The Sense That I'd Never Been To Cambridge. But Then, When I Did Go, The Contrast Between Leeds, Which Was Very Black And Sooty In Those Days, And Cambridge, Which Seemed Like Something Out Of A Fairystory, In The Grip Of A Hard Frost, Was Just Wonderful.

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

Nature Played A Cruel Trick On Her By Giving Her A Waxed Mustache.

Definition Of A Classic: A Book Everyone Is Assumed To Have Read And Often Thinks They Have.

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.

You Always Know When You're Going To Arrive. If You Go By Car, You Don't. Apart From Anything Else, I Prefer Cycling. It Puts You In A Good Mood, I Find.

Life Is Rather Like A Tin Of Sardines - We're All Of Us Looking For The Key.

What I'm Above All Primarily Concerned With Is The Substance Of Life, The Pith Of Reality. If I Had To Sum Up My Work, I Suppose That's It Really: I'm Taking The Pith Out Of Reality.

Cancer, Like Any Other Illness, Is A Bore.

Cancer Survivor

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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.

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At The Drabber Moments Of My Life (swilling Some Excrement From The Steps, For Instance, Or Rooting With A Bent Coat-hanger Down A Blocked Sink) Thoughts Occur Like 'i Bet Tom Stoppard Doesn't Have To Do This' Or There Is No Doubt David Hare Would Have Deputed This To An Underling.'

So Boring You Fall Asleep Halfway Through Her Name.

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All The Effort Went Into Getting There And Then I Had Nothing Left. I Thought I'd Got Somewhere, Then I Found I Had To Go On.

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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.

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

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

Freedom Of Speech

Children Always Assume The Sexual Lives Of Their Parents Come To A Grinding Halt At Their Conception.

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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Memories Are Not Shackles, Franklin, They Are Garlands.

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