One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
ALAN BENNETTI’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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.
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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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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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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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Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
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The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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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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A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth’s.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT