Writer Quotes by Alan Bennett

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

— Alan Bennett

Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

— Alan Bennett

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

— Alan Bennett

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

— Alan Bennett

“I suppose everyone gets written about sooner or later.”

— Alan Bennett

Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development.

— Alan Bennett

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

— Alan Bennett

“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

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just…

— Alan Bennett

“Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the…

— Alan Bennett

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

— Alan Bennett

I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.

— Alan Bennett

“Proust's is a long book, though, water- skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess”

— Alan Bennett

“To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the…

— Alan Bennett

To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

— Alan Bennett

“...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

“A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They…

— Alan Bennett

Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself…

— Alan Bennett

[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

“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just…

— Alan Bennett

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

... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed…

— Alan Bennett

“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

“Kids who read become students who do well in school. Students who do well in school go to college. College students graduate…

— Alan Bennett

“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

“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was…

— Alan Bennett

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

— Alan Bennett

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

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

“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

“For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will…

— Alan Bennett

“Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the…

— Alan Bennett

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things…

— Alan Bennett

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

“...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

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

“I think the need for reading boils down to one simple issue: children are selfish. Reading about other people creates a sense…

— Alan Bennett

“Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse…

— Alan Bennett