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The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.

Alan Bennett

The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETT

Anybody Chosen Else Night Obscure Somebody Soon Thought Trouble
Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
ALAN BENNETT

Done Kindness Nor Read Seem Think Write
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Adjustment Fact Lady Little Made Some Substance Through Van
Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
ALAN BENNETT

Book Commonwealth Equal Herself Literature Read Reader Republic
I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
ALAN BENNETT

Control Expression Freedom Give Strict
Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
ALAN BENNETT

Chance never Next Now Out Sometimes Time
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.
ALAN BENNETT

Bookshelf Library Particular People Perform Stamp
Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETT

Always Course Date Make Out Standard
It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
ALAN BENNETT

Earth Face Mind One See Species
Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETT

Book Live Other Pass Time World
And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
ALAN BENNETT

Come Dead Down Hand Long Person Set Someone Your
Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETT

Call Course Date Out Standard
I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
ALAN BENNETT

Bet Depute Doubt Stoppard Underling
I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
ALAN BENNETT

Nijinsky Ballet Collaboration Excite Fruit More Only Person Remember Suppose Unlikely
…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 her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
ALAN BENNETT

Chosen Felt Impossible Late Read She Stage Writer
We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
ALAN BENNETT

Down Mean No Past Period Recent Remote See

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.

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The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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