It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETTAbove literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
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The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
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I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
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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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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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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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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
ALAN BENNETT