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.
ALAN BENNETTOnce I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
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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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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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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.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
ALAN BENNETT -
Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
ALAN BENNETT