A book, as it were, closes the book.
ALAN BENNETTAnd 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
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.
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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
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I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
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Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
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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.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
ALAN BENNETT