To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
ALAN BENNETTIt was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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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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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
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Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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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.
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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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.
ALAN BENNETT