Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETTAnd one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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.
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But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.
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I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.
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