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 BENNETTWhat I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.
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…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.
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God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
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The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.
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Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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