Alan Bennett Quotes

83 quotes in 1137 categories

• The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you…
• But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly,…
• 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…
• Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of…
• A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
• Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
• You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
• ...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of…
• Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
• [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…
• One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn…
• Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
• Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
• 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…
• 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 our…
• ... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one…
• Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the…
• It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
• God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!
• To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how…

Browse Alan Bennett Quotes by Category