A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
ALAN BENNETTSome 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.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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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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I can walk. It’s just that I’m so rich I don’t need to.
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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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Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.
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No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I’d got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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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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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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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
ALAN BENNETT