To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
ALAN BENNETTHistory is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
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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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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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.
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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
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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 tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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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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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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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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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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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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