Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“She‘d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“I think the need for reading boils down to one simple issue: children are selfish. Reading about other people creates a sense… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall,… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Kids who read become students who do well in school. Students who do well in school go to college. College students graduate… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film.… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Proust's is a long book, though, water- skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess” — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“...But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't.… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull. IRWIN: Oh. Larkin. HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
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. It's… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
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… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really. — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now? — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten. They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
“BURGESS How do you like Moscow? CORAL Loathe it, darling. I cannot understand what those Three Sisters were on about. It gives the play… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which… — Alan Bennett Copy Share Image
![“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." [ Baffled at a Bookcase ( London Review of Books , Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)]” quote by Alan Bennett](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/8c1/alan-bennett-1922_bookshelf_a-bookshelf-is-as-particular-to-its-owne_3055789.jpg)
![“[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.” quote by Alan Bennett](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/8a2/alan-bennett-1922_antithesis_b-riefing-is-not-reading-in-fact-it-is-t_1454820.jpg)
