We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
ALAN BENNETTReading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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.
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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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You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
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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.
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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.
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Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.
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Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
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